Buy And Hold Outdated?

The Market

from the the-new-new-economy dept

In the past few decades lots of people talked about the “buy and hold” strategy of long term investing. It worked when everything is going up. It doesn’t work so well in markets like the current ones – so suddenly some analysts are saying that buy and hold is for suckers. Their arguments seem to miss the point of long term investing. The fact is that it is very very difficult to outguess the market consistently. People who are constantly trading are putting themselves at greater risk in trying to do exactly that. While some regular trading makes sense, so does some “buy and hold”. Like any investment decision, it depends on the person and what they’re trying to do with their money. I think anyone who claims that buy and hold is the only way or the complete wrong way is doing a disservice to anyone who listens to them.