Perspective matters – comparing swing trading vs buy and hold in between 2002 and 2022


I will make this post short and to the point: Good luck trying to beat the market by doing day or swing trading. I know people who try to do this full time who are smart and have the financial means to buy up tens of thousands of dollars of stock to try and buy then sell shortly after. Every single one of these people has a net loss from starting this. There are 14 of them I know – not a single one has come out ahead. Talk about not beating the odds.

Here is the truth r/stocks folks: If you and I were bickering back in May 2002 that AAPL would be dipping from its high of $0.45 we would have been right. AAPL did in fact go down to $0.33 in July 2002. Had you bought puts on AAPL at the right time in 2002 – yay for you. If you had tried to swing trade AAPL in 2002 you would have probably gotten burnt, but maybe not.

Listen: The fact is the best thing you could have done is to have poured $1,000 into AAPL at anytime in 2002 and held for the next 20 years until today, even with AAPL taking a dip recently. You would have more than 300X you original cash invested.

We can do the same thing with the more conservative way of investing, ETFs, since most experienced investors on r/stocks like these more than individual stocks (including myself). Let us take a look at a popular ETF you and I would know as SPY. SPY right now is worth $398. Sure, SPY was at $474 back in December 2021 and man it should “would have been nice to have sold then”. . . April 2002 SPY trading at $119. December 2002 $87.

My point with this post is simple: Buy, hold and enjoy your life. I am not saying buy and hold crappy high risk companies. Pour 75% of your portfolio in things like SPY, VOO and QQQ and don't touch them for decades. Hell, don't even look at them.

Current positions:

40% in SPY/VOO/QQQ ; 10% in SCHD ; 10% in VT ; 9% in AAPL ; 8% in GOOG ; 8% in SOFI ; 6% in TSLA ; 5% NVDA ; Approx. 4% remaining in cash.

Buy.

Hold.

Live your life.


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