Everyone keeps talking about 'tics' and 'pips' and 'blips' Learn to buy and hold make more money that way trust m . Buy a stock and dont check the chart every second i have made lots more money holding stuff for months as usual GS, MA, TIE, CHAP, GOOG, AAPL, BIDU, RIMM, AMR,
actually, you could have made more money by selling those same stocks, and buying them back, over and over, bidu, goog, rimm, aapl, have been all over the place, even ma (this year`s mo stock) has jumped around some in the 92-105 range, and after the initial runnup to 65, there was some pullback if I remember rightly. Bottom line, you can never maximize profit by buying and holding, if anything establish an initial position, and trade around it, but come on, how hard is it to sell goog at 515 and buy it back again at 460, could have done that (rounding here) about 3 times in the last 3 months. Plus I think your getting your afflictions mixed up, that anology is pretty weak.
While "buy and hold" has its merits...I'm wondering what those fellows that bought near Nasdaq 5000 would have to say today. Back then it was de rigeur to say "invest for the long term". It was the only way to "rationally" justify those insane valuations.
The OP will never tell you how he was underwater for ahwhile with most of his positions deep in the red before the market rallied. No exit strategy and basically "going down with the ship" mentality. Had the market kept going lower, I guarentee Stock trader would not be posting on elite anymore. Though things ended up working out for him, I think everyone who read and followed his thread from last june would agree his trading style is gambling at best.