Advice for a market débutant

[Fudo_Myou]

The only thing I would add is that in my opinion rather than waiting for the "best time" to buy you might consider buying on the periodic dips that most stocks go through. If you have access to a 5 year chart facility you may see a stock that has experienced 3 or 4 or more swings or dips over the 5 years. if you look to add holdings in the dips you have the benefit of averaging out your occasional "high" buy.

Yes, that's exactly why I'm holding off for the time being. The NZX does not appear to be in one of those periodic dips at the moment, although it's hard to tell. But of greater concern is the larger picture - at present we're 3yrs+ into a bull market (beginning about April 2009) - just as the Dow and S&P500 are - and bull markets have an infuriating habit of coming to an unseemly end. There seems no shortage of possible events that could trigger a more serious cyclical correction: Europocalypse or just a Spanish/Italian default, a Brazilian or Chinese credit crunch, another b****er scandal/collapse etc. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic, but I think I'll just enter relatively lightly for now (but pretty much in the way you suggest). Nonetheless, it's hard to see a company like RYM being anything but a very good bet in the long-term.


EDIT: what's up with the hash tags? So I wrote 'banker' with a superfluous 'w', it doesn't make me a bad person!