Remember: If you invest via a tracker for the long term and take advantage of volatility through monthly savings, you sidestep a lot of these issues to achieve average returns. And average returns achieved cheaply will actually put you ahead of most investors.

I have veered away from investing even when I have had money to do so partly because I just can’t see how it’s anything but a game of chance and irrational behaviours being played out in a big playground…. Nice to read an article that kind of leans that way .

However I am getting an itch to start playing the game a little at some point in the future and I guess if I follow these trains of thoughts I better not get in too deep and playing may actually be the best approach.
.-= Forest on: Sentimentalism- The Minimalists Roadblock! =-.

Well that, of course, is the 800lb gorilla in the kitten’s sandtray … bf is great for telling you what not to do, but near enough useless for telling you anything else. Sadly I think that’s about the knub of it: chance is a more powerful force than causality and our ability to see patterns in the fabric of reality when there aren’t any is something we need to resist when dealing with investments.

However, bf does provide some clues on timing as well: but buying stocks with strong franchises and balance sheets when everyone’s desperately selling in fear is hardly profound or new advice. We might hope, though, that understanding what causes this gives us half a chance of profiting from these surprisingly frequent opportunities?

Well, no, I’m not counting on that either

A question for you, in reply to this quote: “That’s still no excuse for simply sticking pins into the price pages of the Financial Times.”

What do you suggest instead? Or rather, if neither one of us thinks that throwing darts is a good idea, does behavioral economics suggest something better than “buying the dartboard”?
.-= Mike Piper on: Roth IRA Conversion Deadline =-.