being right is important because being 'wrong' often means losing money. Revision: all my picks have gone up since my update Net gain~10% Tie gained back 2 bucks a share I remember when people wrote that stock off And then there is CHAP whihc peopel told me to sell (now sitting on a 24% gain) This may sound crappy but do keep in mind im using a buy and hold strategy there is little work by my part. Just read some reports and financials. Check the charts twice a day. Simple stuff. No pouring over 1-min charts, .002 cent ticks and level 2 quotes. No multiple monitors or expensive data feeds.
nobody wrtoe the stocks off...And nobody said buy and hold is bad. We would all thike to effortlessly hold on as long as possible while we got to the country club to play cricket...you are missing the poitn of our criticism commpletely. what we said is that you HAD NO PLAN...no risk control, no idea what you were/are doing. you were hanging on blindly after the stocks took a spill...and that is irresponsible and dangerous. no professional trader would ever do what your were doing...not one. You were not looking at the whole picture...the potential down side. you were playing on blind uneducated emotion and greed. In this game you have to free yourself of emotion, and have a solid workable plan, or you will get crushed eventually. The MOST important element in this game is risk control....the LEAST important element is stock picking. You got lucky. and luck only lasts so long. If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. You have 8% in a few months...congrats. I made 3% the past 3 days. which do you prefer?
Do you really want to know what the worst thing is about how you handled your positions? You are NOW more screwed up in your trading philosophy than you were before. You failed to have an exit plan on your stock picks. Your only plan was to become a long term holder because you didn't want to take the loss. Now that the stocks have come back a bit you are JUSTIFYING YOUR POOR TRADING PLAN. This means the next time this happens you will hold on even longer, and the next time you may not be as lucky. There are still people waiting for CMGI to go back to 200 per share. With no exit plan they just watched this stock drop to 1 dollar. Like I said before, you could have taken your loss on your stocks and bought an s&p 500 index fund in july and be up 12.31% If you can't beat an index fund you shouldn't be trading.
Do keep in mind that while i am only performing as well as the S&P as of now, that can change. I have only been holding for 4.5 months. Should my stocks continue to rally with the S&P I estimate that by the 6th month I could have 16% overall gains since historically my stocks have outperformed the markets. The S&P 500 rally WONT STOP ANYTIME SOON http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/z?s=^GSPC&t=6m&q=l&l=off&z=m&a=v&p=s There are no parabolas -just a steady linear runup which may continue for the next 5-10 years like back in 90's The DOW set an all time high and i woudn't be surprised if the S&P does as well. The S&P 500 will set a historic high in 2.4 months Companies are generating more revenue than ever and the US economy is doing fine. Oil prices are falling and interest rates are stable. Stocks go up not cause there is a reason to buy but casue there is no reason to sell. Therefore if there is no compelling reason to sell, stocks keep going up. Pretty simple.
You had your reason to sell and failed to do so. Quit trying to justify poor trading habits. You've mentioned before you were a 500 per day daytrader. Your stocks tanked and all of a sudden you became a buy and hold investor. What's worse, you are trying to brag that you were right.
I am old as dirt and i get a real chuckle out of remarks like: all my picks have gone up since my update you could have done as well with darts in this market. Or, Companies are generating more revenue than ever and the US economy is doing fine. Oil prices are falling and interest rates are stable. When in reality, revenues are up but earning have peaked, are mixed and showing telltale signs of future weakness while roughly 25% of the economy (builders, real estate, lenders) is headed straight for the dumper. (Temporary bounces due to short covering do not endure.) Oil prices are seeking a new level in the low 60's to mid 50's rather than falling. Interest rates are stable for now (we have an election coming) but who knows what the fed will do in 2007? And my favorite: There are no parabolas -just a steady linear runup which may continue for the next 5-10 years like back in 90's Apparently we have a bunch of young whippersnappers in these forums that have not experienced much in the way of economic ups and downs. Ignorance is bliss. I do not have any idea what the market will do, nor do i care much, but i have lived long enough to realize that the market can go through periods of complete irrationality, and often does. But in the long run it is always reality that slaps it down once the short sellers have all thrown in the towell and the buyers are exhausted.