Behavior of the indices does change over time. But they always go up over time. Therefore your edge is time.
How can you agree with "the only edge is time",then state you would never be an investor,only a trader???
I watch the charts everyday for about 4 hours.It seems a common theme with traders that they find an edge in the market which works for a while, but then the market 'changes' and the edge disappears and starts losing money.
This seems odd to me; clearly the market is sometimes going up, sometimes going down, and sometimes going sideways; is sometimes volatile and sometimes not; but is there more to it than that? Surely an 'edge' should be able to cope with such things, as they clearly happen quite frequently and many traders say their systems have been tested over 5 or 10 years? I have never seen anyone explain specifically how the market 'changed' in some mysterious way, other than to make their edge non-profitable. It seems more likely to me that the edge never really existed, and that the trader had a promising backtest and was then 'fooled by randomness' as Taleb might say. Perhaps some of the experienced traders can throw some light on it to a rookie like me.
i agree that over time it seems indexes go up right. so if your an investor and buy on dips you can have more than you started with. but what you started out with is worth more than what you made in the long run.
the solution to that is to not be a investor but become more of a swing trader. catching the same extreme reversion to the mean rebounding moves but taking profits and returning to cash, looking for new opportunity.
so while i agree on the index going up theory i doubt the value of it and the end results.
i agree that over time it seems indexes go up right. so if your an investor and buy on dips you can have more than you started with. but what you started out with is worth more than what you made in the long run.
the solution to that is to not be a investor but become more of a swing trader. catching the same extreme reversion to the mean rebounding moves but taking profits and returning to cash, looking for new opportunity.
so while i agree on the index going up theory i doubt the value of it and the end results.
Hello MarkBrown,i agree that over time it seems indexes go up right. so if your an investor and buy on dips you can have more than you started with. but what you started out with is worth more than what you made in the long run.
the solution to that is to not be a investor but become more of a swing trader. catching the same extreme reversion to the mean rebounding moves but taking profits and returning to cash, looking for new opportunity.
so while i agree on the index going up theory i doubt the value of it and the end results.
The S&P 500 dividends reinvested is what returned 9% since 1871. In reality adjusted for inflation it is rather 6%.Not really following your logic.The market has significantly outperformed inflation(assume 3 % inflation)
Lets say we,go with Goldman's historical return.Long term investors have earned apx 700 to 1000 basis points after inflation.
I don't doubt your success,but I sincerely doubt the success of swing traders vs long term buy hold..
The average stock market return for 10 years is 9.2%, according to Goldman Sachs data for the past 140 years. The S&P 500 has done slightly better than that, with an average annual return of 13.6%. However, the average return looks very different from year to year.