Apple Inc (AAPL)

[roni]

KCMW: For me, AAPL fit that bill a few years back. I think I understood it better than the market, and made money from it. But that is a rare find, IMO. And it took a lot of patience. Do you think the sectors you invest in are poorly understood by the general market? How do you decide to exit?'

Good question.

I have ridden on the shoulders of more knowledgeable people.

Baldy and sfme and fbe first turned me onto precious metals. That was good. I have taken good and bad advice from them and others on the forum and on others. A good part of success is learning what to pay attention to and what to throw out and developing one's own style of investing/trading. I am part way there.

I think many hard commodities are in a multi-year bull market. That does not mean they are going to go straight up, nor does it mean that poorly timed buys will do as well as well-timed ones. I am not talking about precise tops or bottoms, that is silly. If you get 20% of major moves, you can make good money.

So, precious metals, energy, Apple, green energy - those have been winning strategies for me. There are other sectors that may look good over the next decade - broadly I think health care may be one of those.

The way I generally start out in a new sector is with a mutual fund. It is easier, IMO, to do DD and pick one of the best of breed there than in individual stocks. Then I start learning the sector - companies with good prospects, good management, good resources. It is not hard to learn more about the company or the sector than the market knows - especially in out of favor sectors. That is opinion, not fact.

A combination of sector investing, company picking and some broad fund investing has worked for the past period of time. Taking profits from time to time has helped. Not being fully invested helps. I try to run at 20-50% cash these days, taking advantage of opportunities and cashing in profits.

Not much of an answer, but there it is.