I have a problem with the financial media’s persistence of the use of contests to see who can pick stock winners over relatively short periods of time.
There is no expertise required for this, just luck; for at least two major reasons:
First: Picking securities to measure performance over an arbitrary period, without having to designate how long you would hold your securities, does not indicate predictive power, as the contest is supposed to prove.
Secondly: The contest never gives you true ground rules, one of which is always risk. In a contest the assumption is that you throw caution to the winds and pick the riskiest for the maximum returns. This is not a real investment goal.
I have often mentioned my study of the cons as well as pros of now about 1,600 strategies used by investors. My work is unique because it never recommends any particular strategy, unlike other suggestions you get. The truth is, each has its good and bad points.
Strategies must be tailored to individual preferences and needs. What tips the odds for each investor is the discipline employed in the use of strategy. Every investor has built into the purpose for the purchase of a security, the reason to sell it. Discipline guides that sale.
That is what tips the odds favorably. ( See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments.)
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