Posted on 05/17/2006 3:02:05 AM PDT by RWR8189
I don't believe in any of that investing and other things like that..I take my money and bury it in the back yard..wife says I should at least bury it in a box..but I don't believe in such new age idees..
People who criticize Cramer's stock picks miss the point, I think. He gives insights in how traders think and demonstrates that you don't need a crystal ball to make money in the market.
In my experience, buying stocks is relatively easy and the TV experts sometimes do give useful tips. Knowing when to sell is a lot harder, and you almost never hear anyone talk about this.
You're preaching to the choir here. I bought Intel low but forgot the "sell high" part before the 2000 Clinton stock market crash.
The fella Stossel mentions in the article is Burton G. Malkiel, who I think is still around. I've got a well-worn copy of his "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" which is one of the best primers on investing for the individual around, several editions/printings.
I'm kind of a fan of Cramer...I don't get cable, so haven't seen his show, but I read his autobiography, "Confessions of a Street Addict," I think it's called, very entertaining.
He comes on the Glen Beck show at times, which is weird, since he's a liberal, but him and Glen seem to get along.
In any case, I usually enjoy Cramer's comments on the market and the folks who are in it.
Also suggest using dollar cost averaging with no-load, low expense funds that have shown solid returns over the long run.
BTTT
I made the determination a long time ago that none of these clowns have the slightest idea of what they are talking about. They make a good guess once in a while and they are lionized for awhile then forgotten. There is more money to be made by these charlatans by pronosticating than investing in the market. And they are mopping up.
Yea I like Cramer too . I think he said he voted for Reagan in the 80's. He did a good job a few weeks ago of slapping Timmy Russert down on MTP about oil profits. In fact the whole table of experts went real quite after he suggested the Exxon Mobile CEO salary was worth a heck of alot more than Kattie Couric's. It was sight to see Timmy's face after that comment.
Same reason Einstein and Lindberg (to give two extremes) were clueless about politics.
bttt
How is this different from having to liquidate loser stocks that your idiot pump-and-dump churn-o-matic broker got you into?
2. Many studies promoting index funds use historical indices to prove the wisdom of investing in such funds. What these studies rarely mention is that indices are constantly by dropping some stocks while adding new stocks.
Yes, and a properly managed index fund will do likewise. So? The return is the same, minus the relatively trivial expenses associated with getting rid of the old stocks and investing in the new. And it's not "constantly" dropping stocks, it's occasionally dropping stocks.
Still way cheaper than your typical churn-o-matic full service stockbroker, like the one who turned my grandfather's millions into chump change for his heirs and hundreds of thousands of dollars of commissions for himself.
3. One should pay close attention to the starting and ending dates of the studies mentioned in point 2 above.
I don't care about short term gains or losses. Dollar-cost average, buy and hold, and don't pay for crooked stockbrokers' yachts, that's my motto. I'll be buying low-fee index funds from the Vanguard and Fidelity web sites regularly for the next 30 years, and I will never sell any of it until I retire. A very few shrewd or lucky traders of individual stocks will do better than I. Most will do worse. Many will do far worse.
-ccm
Hear, hear! The only investment "advice" worthy of the name is now considered insider trading.
-ccm
Oh, and I also like exchange-traded funds like SPDR and MDY now that I have a bigger pot of money to invest. I haven't bought an individual stock in several years.
-ccm
For the same reason you have to "call" the Psychic Hotline.
Outstanding!
Stop-loss systems like that don't work. Long term, you *will* lose. But as long as you're having fun and can afford it, no great harm.
For every craps bet you make, the house has a mathematical edge. Over a short period of time, it's not uncommon to beat the odds and come out ahead. But that gets less and less likely the longer you play, and how you split up your sessions has no effect.
Think of flipping a coin that's slightly unbalanced so that it comes up heads 51% of the time. Flip it 100 times and you could easily get more tails than heads. Flip it a million times and it's virtually certain there will be more heads. And it wouldn't make any difference if you did the flips in separate sessions and "stopped" a session whenever you had 10 more heads than tails.
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