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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dave who wrote (21474)	6/16/2005 5:33:11 PM
From: Paul Senior	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78915

"It's difficult to out perform the market holding over 200 positions." Well, yes! -gg- When's it ever not difficult to outperform the market? And are we talking consistency here, as in "consistently outperform"? I see that adjective used a lot. Seems to be important to a lot of people. (Should it be?) Should even a realistic objective be "outperform"? What if somebody had goals - retirement, fund kids education - normal stuff like that - could that person achieve goals just as well by equaling the market, if that person invested over 15-40 years? ----- There's Bill Miller who's beat the S&P average for a dozen years running (if my number is right??) and makes headlines for doing it. Turned somewhat around, that means a 500 stock portfolio (I believe 500, right?) - a large grouping of specialized stocks - beats one heck of a lot of mutual fund managers (who have a lot fewer stocks than 500 stocks they're owning). If a person only guessed about concentrated portfolios run by fund managers, should the person easily conclude and be correct that these guys' results outperform or consistently outperform the S&P 500 because these guys have an advantage being concentrated? I'm not one who so easily believes this is true. That S&P "index" is not a fixed index and it's cap weighted. My little portfolio is the same - managed a little more, and weighted too, in a different way. I'm trying to say, I would like to believe that unless somebody knows something about me (how good or bad an investor I am), it's not correct to believe or assume I might be getting lower returns than I otherwise would if I held fewer stocks. Or that I have lower returns than others might get who have a lot fewer stocks in their portfolios than I do. ----------- Anyway, just ruminating here. Not saying my performance record is any better or worse than anybody else's. Just trying to explain - maybe justify a little - what I'm doing.