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

To: Gottfried who wrote (118)	9/21/1998 12:15:00 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10701

Hi Gottfired, thanks for the good sites you point out. While it is true that all financial markets are not the same, the belief that stocks can only go up in the long run, if true, should hold true for all markets (at least the well developed ones). I can also point out that if you'd put a $1000 into DJIA in 1966 just as it hit 1000, today after 32 years of being invested, in real terms you are still carrying a loss! I understand that if you kept the faith and averaged down on DIJA all the way since 1966, then you'd be a winner. But that would mean that you'd have to pour money into a losing proposition for almost 10 years before even starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Somehow I doubt that many of us would pour money in the stocks month after month for 10 years while losing all the way. The bottom line is that those who think one size fits all (like average down, buy and hold, long term it will go up, gentlemen prefer bonds, gold is the place to be...) have not looked at the history long enough and hard enough. The mistake that people make is thinking that it is different this time (or in this country). I read an interesting article on the banking collapse and credit crunch which was very sobering. Besides the fact that it nicely described the current banking crisis, I was impressed by the fact that it was written nearly 2000 years ago on a banking crisis in Roman Empire. I'd type it in to show how little the issues (and their solutions) have changed in 2000 years. But I don't have the time. Sun Tzu