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Strategies & Market Trends : The Art of Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sense who wrote (1618)	3/24/2021 7:46:17 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 10601

I know of people, and not just individuals but professional fund managers too, who sold out in the 2nd week of last March. In doing so they avoided the worst of the down days and felt great about being out. Unfortunately, that feeling lasted into the May (and for some into August) and they ended up losing more money than if they had just held on. This is the big problem with the market timing. Unless you are both very disciplined and very knowledgeable (and lucky too), then you are likely to overshoot/undershoot and miss out on the biggest days. I've developed a system based on volatility and momentum that helps me know when to buy or sell during extreme moves. But it only works if I don't have an opinion on what the end is. And while this system makes money, it loses to those who get the big waves right. GME is actually a good example. Lots of pros lost (and made) hundreds of millions in it. All those numbers pales compared to the people who bought it in single digits or low double digits and held on. So take good look at the chart of GME. How do you become the person who keeps it from 5 to 500 and doesn't sell through all those gyrations, but somehow sells it all at 500? The same question applies to all bubbles.

To: sense who wrote (1618)	3/24/2021 8:21:26 AM
From: Lou Weed	Respond to of 10601

<<If you bought in 2000 and sold in 2002... because that's when you needed the money... and you lost 80% of your investment that way... what possible benefit is there... in valuing the good days on the way to an 80% haircut... when what that really means is, yeah, the kids eat tuna fish sandwiches again tonight ?>> My original post to you was putting forth data (that's not BS by the way) that posits the difficulty in timing markets and the very large potential pitfalls in doing so. For the majority of people out there who have 401ks and full time jobs, buy and hold index funds are by far their best strategy. Over the last 40 years how many fund managers have beaten the S&P500 index?? The article is not BS...... It's not my trading style as I've learned to be more nimble with individual stocks and take profits more frequently over the years. I've done well and in semi-retirement I can afford to sit in front of a screen and spend more time observing, learning and improving my strategies. For most, that's not an option. Simply put....even the best of us, no matter how prosaic we are at expressing ourselves can time the market perfectly. We can learn to see warning signs and trade accordingly to better our odds at coming out ahead.

To: sense who wrote (1618)	3/29/2021 12:07:05 AM
From: Rarebird	4 Recommendations Recommended By Investor2 Kahlua Sun Tzu towerdog Respond to of 10601

It is all a mindset. I was a buy and hold investor for years from August 1982 till April 2000. During that time I put at least $500 a week in the S&P 500. I had a full time job where I was making a few thousand a week and did not fret about what the stock market did on a daily basis. In fact, I didn't even follow the stock market on a daily basis or even know that technical analysis even existed. I was told by Marty Zweig, George Soros and Jimmy Rodgers that the stock market was dirt cheap. That was enough for me. I was so busy raising my three sons and working 14 hours a day 7 days a week that I had no time to even track what SPX was doing on a daily and even a weekly basis. But I had full confidence that what I was doing would be immensely profitable down the road. I waited for my statements to check where things were at. Now, of course, I cannot do that since I am retired and cannot afford a big drawdown. The 1987 crash did not faze me in the least because I was earning good money and had a lot of money saved. The mindset is completely different for the finance professional and retail investor who has a very good paying job and is cash flow rich. I sold in April 2000 after a 20% decline in my portfolio. Still, it was well worth it and immensely profitable. Now I follow the market full time and am a swing trader. It is more stressful since I am retired, but still very worth my while. I recently had a person in my complex ask me how I can have so much money in the stock market and sleep at night. My answer to him was that it was a bull market and the Fed and fiscal policy was extremely bullish so I don't fret about the short term moves. Again, it is all a mindset. I am not here to judge. Being has many senses. Existence is revealed in many ways. What does that mean in this context? There are many different ways to profit in the stock market. It is all a mindset.