trader_murf

Year to Date Performance of Dow 30 Members

At the risk of stating the obvious what this interesting line up shows is that timing (and maybe more than a little bit of luck) is everything in this market. The reality is any one of these can have made or lost one money depending on entry point. It seems like trading on fundamentals is a far second to timing, psychology and luck. In this market I have bought positions that seem fundamentally sound and even with charts that look good that shift in days and have had to just dump them to cut losses, except for BA, ha, ha - see above. What is really bad cutting those losses on great stocks was still the right choice months later. I can only figure that eventually great values like XOM will come back into favor. In this market I am still buying but only very selectively and smaller amounts than usual. If something pops I will tend to sell and take a profit and hold nothing long term except several conservative dividend payors and for better or worse some Vanguard mutual funds for my IRA but that is another story...