Investing 102

[GregWeld]

This got me to laughing -- and not at you -- but just when I thought about it with regards to myself.... I've been doing investing since the mid 70's - I've been retired for 21 years (which means I have a LOT of time) and I've NEVER listened to an earnings call yet.

Here's the reason for that.... And again - this is only as it relates to Investing 102. By the time you've heard the earnings call - the cat is already out of the bag - good or bad. When you are really INVESTED or you're about to INVEST - you have plenty of time to gather information and even better - you can get a quick synposis of what they did, and what they're saying going forward, on about 10 gazillion financial websites.

I was using "earnings season" more as a "okay NEWBS -- pay attention this week and next and see how this can affect the market in general"... rather than a drill down on every nuance of a particular companies performance. I was using this "heads up" more like a building block... To build on the other things - good chart and dividend and blah blah blah... So it's like - now lets add some terms you hear and what they mean to the market.

A bunch of negative earnings reports and the market can turn south (general trend) until we start to hear "better" news --- a bunch of the biggies reporting good news and the market can be upbeat. But for our purposes I don't think we need to be trying to find reasons to buy or sell because if you start doing that - you'll lose money. You'll never get it right. You might once or twice - but in general you won't. Leave that to the "traders".

I have two friends that are real life traders - live in NYC and work for a couple of the big houses. They trade zillions of shares minute by minute. That's their job - and they're looking for PENNIES per share. They watch the market minute by minute and only trade in 4 or 5 names. They're looking for the trend in the stock by the HOUR. They don't care how the market is moving they only care that the market IS moving and they place their bets accordingly. They'll trade 20,000 shares 10 times in an hour on one company if they can make a nickel per share. They eat Prilosec for lunch.