I would be a bit disappointed in myself if I didn’t make the effort to be fair, so on this thread, here it is:
The Motley Fool wrote a letter to its members that didn’t try to sell a service.
It was just advice, and the best advice it’s been handing out for years. In the face of the robots and High Frequency Traders …
Minute-by-minute stock moves aren’t our game
Our game is played over years. Decades even. Across our Foolish services and across the continents, we’ve demonstrated the power of long-term, patient, business-like investing.
And competing against the billions of dollars supporting HFTs or quantitative shops stacked with PhDs isn’t our idea of winning.
It reminds me of Warren Buffett’s advice about playing a world-class chess champion. “How do you beat Bobby Fischer?” he asked. “You play him at any game but chess. I try to stay in games where I have an edge.”
Like Buffett, your investing edge lies in focusing on your businesses more than your stock prices.
And the letter goes on to extol long-term investing. Much as I said in this post, you can’t beat robots and HFTers at their game – but you can win at your own if it’s long-term investing.
Not that this excuses the blatant manipulation I’ve noted in other discussions, but it’s good to see TMF still remembers their roots.
