I think you are saying that one (who has savings) should have an investment account in addition to a trading account. However, personally I use longer term market timing on my investment account. I don't just do a buy/hold and hope there are no bear markets.
The title is good. The statement is supported by strong fundamentals: evolution goes from monkey ==> to day trader ==> to trader ==> to investor.
i would make the argument that a buy and hold investor could go the next 5 years and not make anything. we could go up and down but probably wont go far from this 10000 area. the market is fully valued.
You can play medium sized trends (like the bull run-up in commodities) but a 'buy and hold and stash it away for a generation' philosophy? With tech advances and tech acceleration making the future difficult to predict, and larger/faster capital flows going to any company who is willing and able compete, is it really possible to predict which stocks will win a generation later? Of course, you can buy and hold a mkt index thru an ETF or Vanguard fund. And that is what Burton Malkiel in "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" recommends. He talks about how the long term trend of stocks is up from like 1860 to 2004. Nassim Taleb brings up the caveat: if you invested outside the US, say Russia, you got screwed. And also 1860 to 2004 is only about 150 years and if we take a generation to be 30 years, that is only 5 data points. I'm not drawing any conclusions about the future based on only 5 data points. Of course, even if the next 100 years will be in an uptrend, then there is the psychological aspect. Say 10 years later there's a stock market crash, will you have the balls to keep your positions?