100%, you nailed it, a perfect comment!
I am an INVESTOR. I am NOT a TRADER!
Far, far too many people claim they want to “invest” but they function like traders.
*Some* traders do quite well. I don’t stinkeye them. I don’t hate them. They provide necessary market liquidity.
However, I am not a trader. I’m an investor.
From a financial well-being perspective? Your point is perhaps the single, most valuable distinction people should make.
Investing vs Trading. It took me a long time to learn this and I did it on my own. It has been so important to me I wrote an essay that I passed on to my children and give to certain young people when they graduate from high school along with my standard gift and favorite poem.
You invest for your future, you save for cars, houses and education. A portfolio is a bit like my farm that I plan to own all my life making constant improvements to it.
I know traders that seem to do well but they only tell me about their successes and I know they are not always successful. For every winner there is a loser. A lot religiously follow Motley Fool recommendations which I mostly consider to be grounded pump and dump exercises. What they recommend today they unrecommend soon it seems; chasing the next big thing and sometimes it works very well.
Having been pretty deep in corpocracy I also know that analysts always tell a version of the truth and the motivation for that truth changes all the time.
Someone else on this thread suggested that if you think you need to buy or sell something only buy or sell half of what you plan. There is a lot of wisdom in that but you can also end up with a lot of bits and pieces to watch. What the comment speaks to thought is how hard it is to really read the market right. I can give lots of personal examples of that.
I will also add to the whole of this thread, THE NEWS WE OUT HERE IN THE WORLD RESPOND TO HAS ALREADY HAPPENED WHERE IT WAS MADE and if you are not one of the news makers or a first hand witness you are now just trying to follow the herd.