TSE Stocks

[JohnLarue]

Tally up the responses you get here, except mine, as to whether you should buy or sell, and if there is a clear winner, do the opposite.

This is not a slight at my esteemed fellow terbites, but rather a contraries approach to the market. The contraries believes that when everyone is screaming sell, you've seen real capitulation - then is the time to buy.

Or if you don't like this - take the general rule of thumb - Sept. and Oct. are sometimes bad months to be invested. November is generally a fun time.

Act accordingly.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I certainly do not wish to offend TQM or any of the other posters, however, this is not good advice.
1. The sample size of opinions on this board is far too small relative to all the market players to form a contrarian approach, in addition the investment expertise and track record of the responders is unknown and not uniform. Undoubtedly there is a mix of long term value investors, growth oriented investors, technical investors, day traders and dart board pickers, each with differing investment objectives & investment time horizons. Their collective amalgamated opinion will be a mish mass, unclear & somewhere in the middle

2. Stock movements are generally driven by
i) company specific events (e.g. earning reports, increases in sales, management changes etc)
ii) industry specific events (e.g. technology changes, takeovers, commodity prices etc)
iii) macroeconomic events (change in interest rates, demand for commodities etc)
iv) General market movements (when market risks are high, such a Thursday morning, no one bids for stock & everything sells lower, even companies who report great earing's)
These are all independent random events which do not follow a calender. There have been many studies to attempt to justify "Rules of thumb" such as "Sell in May. then go away", "The January effect" etc. While it has been shown there are some very week associations, these rules have no statistical basis

In my opinion if you think a company has good prospects for long term sustainable growth (Manulife is one example) is priced @ a reasonable price to earning or price to cash flow ratio & there is not a huge amount of market risk, buy it at 2-5% position of your well diversified portfolio & hold it for 5 years.
You should make money on your portfolio. Not necessarily that specific stock, but on your portfolio.
I also believe there is a lot of market risk right now, so very aggressive buying may not be prudent & it it best to keep some cash available to buy what could very well be screaming bargains in the near future

 

[zekestone]

If you're an investor, you should be theoretically be buying companies that are solid long term investments. This *should* mean that a downturn like this is an opportunity to buy more shares in your 'solid company investment' at a discount.

Selling when the market is down "to avoid further losses" is basically the same thing as "locking in losses and avoiding future gains".

Now for a trader, the question shouldn't be whether to buy or sell, but whether to go long or short.

And for speculators, I'm not sure.