(09-29-2021, 09:27 AM)The Real Marty Wrote:

(09-27-2021, 10:18 AM)HURRICANE!!! Wrote: Right on cue as usual -- cruise lines are up ~ 15% since your post.  Reopening stocks (including cruise lines, hotels, and other travel stocks) are on fire.

The big money, Goldman Sachs and the like, know what these companies are worth.  The big money also gets the latest news before we do.   That's why the price is set by the big money.  Any little guy who tries to out-trade the big money is going to lose eventually.  Because eventually, the stock will trade at what the company is actually worth.  That's the whole idea of a stock market.  And if anyone thinks they can assess the value of a publicly traded company better than the big money, they are deluding themselves.  

This is why I don't try to trade stocks.  I try to pick really solid companies, and never sell.  Every now and then I get lucky.  I bought MSFT at about $28.  Today it's about $280.  I didn't sell it when it doubled, or tripled, or quadrupled, or quintupled.   Buy and hold forever really works sometimes.   I've seen too many people sell out prematurely because they were afraid of losing their profit in a stock.  

I've had plenty of failures, too.   One year, I had a trifecta of solid value stocks and all three had CEOs that went to jail and the stock collapsed.  It was Worldcom, Tyco, and something else.  These stocks were highly recommended "value" stocks.  You "couldn't lose money" on those companies, they said.  I owned all three.  Lucky me.  

The only reliable way to really beat the market is to do what Warren Buffet does.  Research, analyze, work work WORK.  Turn over every rock.  Look at and understand every number in every financial statement, every footnote, know their suppliers, know their customers, know the business environment they are in, know the management, know everything.  Because I guarantee you Goldman Sachs knows all that, and that's why they have a much better idea than any of us what these publicly traded businesses are actually worth.   I'm way too lazy for that.  So why try to beat the market when you can match the market with an index fund and do really well, if you are willing to hold on for significant period of time.  It takes no work.  Except having a job and saving up some money, of course.

Good post.  Let me clarify that personally, I'm not trying to beat the market in the long term but rather take advantages of the short term opportunities that may only come around a few times within a lifetime. Covid-19 should have been a long term disaster but instead presented investors/traders with an immense amount of financial opportunities.  Warren Buffett failed to adapt with with panic airline stock selloff.  The rare opportunities (major dips) that resulted from Covid-19 is why I changed my financial approach for the time being.  That time is coming to an end soon so I'll likely migrate over to SP500 ETF (SPY) and Bonds or something moderately conservative.  In the meantime, I don't think it's a bad approach to ride the waves that each industry has presented in sequential manner as it relates to Covid-19 (e.g. stay at home stocks, medical/healthcare stocks, tech stocks, recovery stocks, end).

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