I thought this little sharing from Joshua Brown of The Reform Broker makes a lot of sense. Most of the media discusses whether we are at the top or bottom. But really most of the time we are in the middle thinking about tops and bottoms, worrying about whether we are at the top or have we reached the bottom:
Market-timers don’t live long, its a horrible existence. My friend JC likes to say picking tops and bottoms is the most expensive job on Wall Street.
A lot of the media’s time and attention is spent discussing whether or not something is bottoming (housing, stocks, consumer confidence, ratings, etc) or topping (tech stocks, valuations, bond prices, sentiment). It’s great conversation but not helpful.
Because most of the time things are not bottoming or topping. They are middle-ing. They are churning or they are trending. Most of the time, there is no inflection point at hand – these are rare occurrences. So to focus on them to such a great degree is probably a distraction and definitely a waste of time. And energy and emotion.
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abc
Tuesday 5th of June 2012
We all time the market. Just don't try to catch the top or bottom. Usually, it is quite clear whether it is a growing economy or a recession and that is good enough in terms of timing.
Drizzt
Sunday 3rd of June 2012
Speculator takes in knowledge and attempts to translate to wisdom to execute for a result.
the time frame is just secondary. its just i choose a longer time frame haha.
Jared Seah
Sunday 3rd of June 2012
Drizzt,
You've made me - a speculator - smile :)
Drizzt
Sunday 3rd of June 2012
that is the thing. people put the word investing as something good and speculating is like gambling.
to me investing for 10 years IS speculating.
Createwealth8888
Sunday 3rd of June 2012
Only those practising ETF Cost Averaging are not market timers, the rest of us including value investors are doing some levels of market timing. No meh?