Comment by the__alchemist
Comment by the__alchemist 3 days ago
Spot on on the timing being important. I don't think you need to fine-tune it that much; short and hold until the pop happens. If you hold off for a the pop could happen at an indefinite time; maybe very far from now, then I think that invalidates the individual prediction.
One frustrating aspect of investing is that confident information is tough to come by. It's my take that if you have any (I personally rarely do), you should act on it. So, when someone claims confidently (e.g. with adjectives that imply confidence) that something's going to happen, then that's better than the default.
I don't have the insight the claimer does; my thought is: "I am jealous. I with I could be that confident about a stock's trajectory. I would act on it."
What you're describing is what Nassim Taleb calls "tawkers." People like economists, journalists, pundits, etc. who talk big but don't have any skin in the game for being wrong or irrelevant (time is a great example). Since there is no feedback loop to punish bad or irrelevant takes, they can continue tawking for a long time.
When I have similarly strong opinions, I do act on it because I enjoy seeing how right or wrong I was. Markets are a harsh, expensive teacher. You either learn a trick or two about uncertainty, overconfidence, humility, etc, or you run out of money.
I think you're better at it than you're letting on even if you decided to not play. You already understand the properties of the game.