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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Z Analyzer who wrote (2815)	3/13/1998 11:22:00 AM
From: LK2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9256

*Off Topic*Z Analyzer Stock Screen Program. There is no really reliable screening method, fundamental or technical, for finding stocks that will make you money as fast as you want them to. If there were, as Stitch said >>If investing were that easy we would all be rich.<< Even when you study companies and stocks, and you've apparently put in a lot of time and effort into the disk drive sector and came up with a solid understanding of these companies, there's still a large, random element in how much you make or lose in investing. Sector strength\weakness often has more effect on total return than a company's fundamentals, especially when you start to hold concentrated positions. What we don't like to admit, or realize, is that people like Peter Lynch, Warren Buffet, George Soros, who are famous for making large amounts of money, did so over a period of many years. As far as I'm concerned, I'd like to make my $million by next week (or even better, by tomorrow). Read PX's post, which explains why a screen , while a practical necessity (you need to have some method unless you're completely crazy), can't be perfect: you are using simple criteria to describe the real world. And even if you tried to use complex criteria, I don't know how much better the results would be. One more thing: the nice part about the stock market is that you don't have to be perfect or be an expert to make money. The bad part is that we always want more money than we make. Two more thing: there are 'good' stock screen programs for computers. But you already have one, in your head, that is just as good. The difference is that we often have more faith when the computer prints out an answer, than when we try to figure it out ourselves. Message 3687965 To: Larry Kuznets (2800 ) From: Pierre-X Thursday, Mar 12 1998 1:51PM EST Reply # of 2816 Re: Mindless Screening Generally when you take a large pool of data and apply simple screening critera to it, you end up with "system optimized" results, meaning you get results that bring out the defects in your screening criteria--not the results that you really wanted. One example of this from my experience as a game developer is tuning a game for balance. In any complex system, small changes in relationships avalanche into huge and sometimes completely unexpected results in other areas of the system. Mathematicians study these things as "chaos theory." I'm of the (apparently rare) belief that there is NO simple method for finding good plays. There is NO substitute for pounding the pavement, knocking on a dozen doors, and reading a thousand pages. Every day. The Buffett makes on average about one trade a year. <g> The Lynch traded a lot, but he literally knocked on a dozen doors a day, and he could talk your ear off about each and every one of the 500 stocks in his holdings at any given time. This is not a game for the hobbyist. God bless, PX