From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Mon Sep 16 2002 - 12:02:55 MDT
scerir wrote:
> "Sell in May
> and go away".
> Is the old saying
> still sound, down there?
Wall Streeters love to employ simplistic rules and slogans to guide them
in their buys and sells, but careful analysis shows such rules to be
worthless. Many of these slogans also contradict others.
"Never try to catch a falling knife" (don't buy when the market is
tanking).
"Don't buy straw hats in the summer" (be contrarian; buy when the market
is tanking).
etc.
One reason I left the business in the early 90's is that the investment
business is, quite frankly, characterized mainly by irrational
unscientific BS. The industry is not suitable for science-minded guys
like me.
The profound and largely hidden truth about the stockmarket is that
intelligence and knowledge will buy one absolutely nothing. Countless
empirical studies show that monkeys do as well as MBA's in the long run.
This is to say that the market is extremely if not perfectly efficient.
It discounts new public information *instantly*. It took me almost ten
years to learn this. The popular prognosticators and sooth-sayers -- the
talking heads on Wall Street -- are ignorant irrational people who
believe the Emperor still wears clothes.
I was once one of them. Then I renounced my religion. :)
-gts
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