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.
Continue to agree!
I used a similar layered approach:
My backbone - retirement planning/401k/my individual Roth - ETFs, some REIT, a bit of downside bond/TIP protection. I do prefer to be fine-tuned - S&P500 + extended, international (split between developed and emerging), etc. But it’s easily the largest portion of my overall portfolio. No lurches, just regular rebalancing and age-appropriate adjustments - more on the aggressive side (I will say, some of the CW you find on equities/bonds is dated, I think, especially for younger folks).
My cash positions - CD/CD Ladders, standard HYSA/Emergency fund, et al - that’s < 5 year horizon stuff. Liquidity. Some what-ifs - though, as I get older? I’m no longer worried as much the ‘classical’ EF stuff - though, I keep a cushion because despite my kids being on a good path and understanding personal responsibility, I’m still a worrier and “just in case”. Hell, I do have a bit of gold/silver/platinum - everybody probably should - but it’s not huge.
Then, there’s my taxable brokerage/investments - wealth-building. It’s funny you mention Motley Fool - I do read regularly. I’d never dive in without due diligence, but one habit I’ve been using for 20+ years now? I keep a separate, simple XLS that tracks every buy (and the rare sell). My son teases me - and he’s right - nowadays, I could use tools on Fidelity/any brokerage to do the same thing but I like to keep a simple spreadsheet myself. I track sources that gave me the idea to buy, I record WHY I decided to buy, and I also note my expectation for returns and time horizons. On the few occasions I sell? Why I gave up - and “lessons learned”. Why keep it separate? It forces me to think, regularly review, weed out the pikers/places I’ll stop reading. Sure - as I told my son - I do know I could do all of this inside my brokerage platform... but would I still do the work if it was watchlists and flags and comments? Tracking separately forces me into the upfront work and regular reviews.