Quote:
Originally Posted by wutamess
I do that too.
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Well quit buying stocks based on solely analyst ratings. They are nice as a confirmation indicator but I would never buy or sell anything because some nut with a calculator says too. They don't know how to run AAPL. They most likely are working for a firm or have contacts with firms that are looking to dump AAPL so they put a "Buy" rating on it so the poor schleps will fork over their money to the bog boys as the big boys sell.
If you're going to trade or even invest in individual stocks you are going to have to either learn fundamental-based investing or technical-based (chart reading) investing and I would encourage you to do both. Otherwise you are just going with a gut feeling or otherwise a "hot tip". You don't have to have an MBA to trade based on fundamentals and you don't have to spend hours upon hours pouring over charts to trade based on technicals.
What you do need to do is have a plan and some criteria and rules. Understand the more savvy side of things. Perhaps you should have bought a Put when you bought your AAPL as a hedge? Or perhaps you should have sold a long time ago using a Stop-Loss rule of 10% and took your lumps and walked away?
These are the things I am talking about. If you're going to do it, then do it and do it right. Otherwise just $-cost average into mutual funds and call it a day. There is nothing wrong with doing that at all, it's just boring but often works out much better in the long run.