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Pastimes : John Dessauer's Investors World -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wren who wrote (1940)	12/16/1998 7:57:00 PM
From: Wren	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2346

I am reading the 1997 William Gross book on investing. Gross is the head of PIMCo. In discussing market timing he makes sense. "It is extremely difficult to time the market over the short term. The biggest problem is mastering human emotion, primarily your own..... There are times, though, when changes in an investment portfolio should be made - and that doesn't mean selling the hot growth stocks and buying the conservative large caps. You should be altering your stock/bond mix as well as raising or investing cash by focusing on the longer term outlook..... at least three years, maybe as long as five." He quotes Jesse Livermore, a 1920s and 1930s Wall Street type who made and lost 8 fortunes, "Throughout all my years of investing I've found that the big money was never made in the buying or the selling. The big money was always made in the waiting." Gross then concludes, "Forget about trading. Set your sights on a horizon and sail until you get there. My ideal horizon is three to five years because it eliminates the daily flow of emotion and allows you to focus on the important macroeconomic trends that are the primary movers of the market." I believe that this is especially good advice for Investors World subscribers. It should help keep us from buying JD's recommendations that may be too early, and help us stay the course as long as the picture still looks good for a stock. But, hopefully, it will encourage us to get out when either a company's prospects dim or when the long-term outlook seems unclear (such as a topping out of a major up movement like we have had recently).