Interesting discussion going on. Thanks to Pankaj, Ashish, softtouch, SGM, Desciple, vince. Great going friends.
The point that I want to drive home is that it is always very rewarding if you have a long term approach provided you have done your homework. What I mean by home work is: identification of list of stocks based on FA. Shortlisting them to accomodate good sectors and have a portfolio for around 10 stocks. Identify your investible capital. Identify ones risk taking ability. Have a realistic return expectations compare to existing instruments. (one should not expect a growth of 100% each year!). And invest and monitor. Am not asking for invest and sleep. One has to be smart investor rather than dumb investor. Monitor quarterly or half yearly. After a year If one is confident about stock keep it else get rid of it.
Friends, there is no end to logic. And many examples can be quoted to counter the long term approach. But wherever examples has given to prove it false are all presentation of data to strengthen ones statement and they are not the actual/ realtime holding of an investor. I know only one thing that the 2nd richest man in this world is Investor and not Trader !!!
Everyone can not be a trader. It requires many things and top of that your passion and skills. One can learn basics of TA, risk/reward, Money management etc but how strong is the interest to continue for lifelong !!! Its a full time profession and no one can deny this fact. If I am good at something else I would earn my living by doing that thing rather than forcing myself to become trader and learn the nitty gritty of TAs and finally give up after year or so.
For investing it requires less effort. Realtime case: I invested 2 years back and have a return of more than 60% overall. Want to mention that I hardly invested more than 15 days (5hrs for 15 days = 75 hours max.) in last 2 years to monitor my portfolio. Had I have been trader I would have invested my all 2*365 days = 730 days (10 hrs for 730 days = 7300 hours). The facts are at your end, compare it. It is like close to 100 times effort will go into trading comapre to investing. But will my trading returns will be 100 times of 60% i.e. 6000 %. I seriously doubt.
Do I need to remind that TIME is the greatest money. Utilise it according to your interest, skills and strength.
Think it over !!!
cheers,
nkpanjiyar