Have Times Changed?

It seems to me that since I have been invested in the market - 20 years this year with RBD as virginal player - that some things have changed but one thing has stayed the same. If you care to find out what has stayed the same you'll have to wait a tad - if you don't want to wait I don't care.

Go elsewhere.

It seems that people have just lost patience.

That is if people don't get what they want, when they want it they will simply just drop a stock - if it has a particularly tough time but is otherwise doing ok.

Now I haven't done a study into it, I'm just thinking as I put pen to paper but my take on this phenomenon is that it has some basis in fact.

You of course have the ideal institutional investors, like your ACC's and superannuation funds that have largely remained unchanged. They still have money in companies like FPH and MFT for the long term, regardless of short term fluctuations.

AND they are winners.

I'm talking about the individual investors such as myself, who because of technology and age - yes I'm aware that there are many investors far younger than me - are more aware of the ability because of the aforementioned tech and because of their changing investing personalities that are perhaps different from you and me - who may be a little older and think differently when it comes to investing.

Perhaps there's a wee bit of age differentiation from generation to generation and it happens naturally as we get older, we perhaps have different savings and investing goals than we did perhaps 20 years ago.

I don't know.

I didn't get my current investment profile straight away it was around 2007 that I starting reading books like Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor that I formed the view - along with a hell of a lot of my own thinking - that the only form of investing that really mattered was long-term.

I think that this long-term/short-term thinking and its relevance to the current topic of conversation is the main rub - of sorts.

I still think investing has somewhat changed overall. The short term is, in my opinion a product of the internet and all that the internet has opened us up to the world - good and bad.

It just makes things faster.

AND don't you just love that word disruption.

Disruption to a business, it started with your Google's and has now upset the taxicab business, hotel business and on and on....

Everything seems to have changed to a more I want that now and if I can't have it now I don't want it.

To be fair there are those rarities who have got to the long-term investing thing so much earlier than I and they range across all ages.

I really havent changed much since 2002 when I bought the bulk of my portfolio.

What I am hoping to change is my reactions to what happens in the market - instead of reactions after the fact I want to react before they happen and that will mean watching closer than I have done before - if that's possible!

I finally have got rid of the WHS shares and it seems, while I reacted far too slowly, I reacted quickly enough to get a decent price. They are now selling for a lot less.

Like you're differences between the WHS and HLG. Hallensteins are making an impact online wearas The Warehouse seem to be all over the place with their offerings and barely make in impact.

Why is it that in a world of HLG vs WHS, why does HLG continue to innovate while the WHS remains stale and staid.

That perhaps a title of another column for another day.

Happy long term (and short term)investing.



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