The beginners struggle

[Not The Chosen One]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, it was probably more about the investors holding for as long as they do. It certainly makes sense when you get those massive gains from the likes of XRO which I did hear from a couple of people who invested in them and did bloody well - an element of luck must come into play in some of those instances I would have thought.

I guess the one's I researched and looked at to see how they performed over the last 5 years got me thinking why invest for that long when in some cases, they were basically flat or losing money the whole time.

There's probably a lot of novices like myself who saw some big drops in mid March and decided to buy like I did with ABA, for example. The harder test may be to come when I can't simply look for someone that's had a huge drop in the space of a few weeks or few days to jump on to.

This site definitely helps when you can get so many perspectives from everyone that makes you think a little bit more.

[kiora]

I typically invest because
1)I don't want to be taxed on gains
2)I don't wish to be a hypochondriac worrying about about osculations in daily/minute share price movements
3) traders need to be on their game all the time with fancy graphs to tell them when to buy/sell ie I'm a lazy investor
4) I find if you don't own a particular share on 12 days/365 days you tend to miss the gains
5) Trends are your friend.Over the last xxxx years the market has always gone up over the long term
6) I'm happy to gear up the portfolio when the time is right to maximize the return on capital in what I perceive a low risk/reward company( pays a dividend,low/well managed gearing,growing profitability)
7) I don't wish for a full time job trading,more set & forget

[kiora]

Plus
8)Interest on borrowing for dividend paying shares is tax deductible for investors
9)The difficulty of being an investor is that there is only less than 10 companies listed in NZ that I would invest in & put in the bottom drawer
10)The management team of the company is top priority.Are they aligned with investors?.Is there good succession planning?Has the company got a long history of lifting turnover while maintaining margins? Any doubt ,stay out.
11)Investors benefit from compounding returns

12)Conversely a trader should be seeking volatility.Any share/company could do.