Replies to post #73625 on ajtj99's Market Pulse

[LG]

market_watcher: Funny, people don't call fundamental analysis BS

Fundamental Analysis, what is that? And let's not leave Sentiment Analysis out of the fray....vbg

Regards,
LG

[Newly2b]

I think the definitive element in applying either T/A or F/A is the user. Everyone looks at things differently, and that difference is why some make money and others do not.

It's like anything else in life, talent alone won't cut it, nor will vast knowledge and experience without that spark of creativity. Only when these elements combine (creativity/vision with knowledge/experience) does excellence emerge. Sorta like when the right-brain and the left-brain are both working at top performance . . . together!

Newly

[CaribbeanJim]

Investing vs. Poker

I had copied this analogy from somewhere, which I think you will find interesting:

Poker is a zero-sum game — what the winners win, in the aggregate, has to be equal to what the losers lose. But stock investing is not a zero-sum game. Over time, stocks tend to have positive returns so investors overall will be winners. But the stock game offers something that poker just can't match: Over time, the game itself has a built-in positive expected return for all the players. Of course the biggest similarity between poker and investing in stocks is that both involve an intriguing combination of luck and skill. But there's no doubt in my mind that, over time, skill will prevail in both games. The best poker players can beat poor players even with weak cards. And the best investors can make money even in weak markets. The best have to learn to take their lumps with dignity, because lumps there will surely be. But in the long run, the best poker players and the best investors will come out on top. Another important similarity between poker and investing is that both games pit professionals against amateurs. In poker, this is how the professionals make the majority of their money — by playing opponents they know to be weaker. What's so remarkable about this fact is that weaker players continue to play the pros — and happily, too. when you make a trade in the stock market, you are most assuredly playing at the same table as the best in the business. Next time you trade a stock, ask yourself who might be on the other side of the transaction. Sure, it could be another individual investor just like you — or it could be Warren Buffett, George Soros, or any of thousands of other professionals who are even more skilled (but whose names you never see in the headlines). There's one thing in both games that amateurs and professionals have in common: Both are working from incomplete information. So in the absence of complete information, one of the things that good players do to win is to play the probabilities.