Diego Stendardo

Three Stocks To Be Held To Infinity and Beyond

well, i could swap GE, JNJ, and BAC with XOM, MSFT and KO or , you choose, any successful story of the past decade. For example: "had i bought $10000 worth of PTR in 2003 for $20 a share and sold it in 2006 for $120 and reinvested the $60000 i made in FSLR in january 2007 i would own circa $600 thousand worth of FSLR stock now"

Point is: everything is easy in hindsight - finding today the next 10 bagger is a different story;

Investing in great companies is safer than trading on margin, but investing requires great fundamental analysis skills and a lot of PATIENCE - It took Buffett DECADES to become what he now is, and we're talking about an outlier, a one in a million phenomenon.

Ask yourselves:Are you willing to hold a stock of a promising mid-cap company you buy today until the year 2025 and reinvest all the dividends you get? How old will you be in 2025? How much stock are you going to buy? What if 5 years from now it is only up 40% from your buying price?

Are you willing to put aside all the extra money you could spend today to have fun while you're young , to save it for investment in a promising company because MAYBE it will make you rich 25 yrs from now when you'll be 55?

On the other side we have Trading, which may seem like a shortcut to riches, (a lot of successful stories are there on the web - what they don't advertise is that for every guy that made it with trading there are 500 more that went bankrupt) but it requires guts, blood, costly experience and emotional skills very uncommon - not to forget that luck plays its part and that it's very easy to go bust when you play with margins, leverage and futures.

Diversify? You risk investing too little in the next ten bagger

Don't diversify? You risk putting too much money in the next Bear Stern.

Making money is NOT easy.