This is a true story about GE. A man (the father of a friend of mine) invested 50,000 dollars in GE in the 1950s and let it ride on up to the year around 2000 AD.
At this point this $50,000 in GE stock was worth a cool 3 million dollars. However, what happened is during the Great Recession GE had gone into bad loans that weren't researched properly before they were given to people. So, as a result of these bad loans GE tanked and really hasn't recovered since around 2009 or so.
But, the point here is that between the 1950s and the 2000s GE stock was really hard to beat. Right now, Microsoft is one of the stocks that if you bought into in the 1980s you would be sitting pretty right now because it has mostly gone up and up and up ever since the 1980s.
The point is you have to know when to buy, when to hold and when to sell. If you don't it might not be worth being an investor in the first place.
But, if you are an investor being a long term investor is the best as long as you are doing the research to make sure you are investing in the right blue chip stocks with dividends so your risk is compensated by the dividends along the way.
You don't want to be a short term investor simply because most short term investors are bankrupt within 10 years. Because that is sort of like gambling in Vegas. Most people don't eventually come out ahead from doing this. Many people break even but most people don't come out ahead being short term investors within any 10 year period. This is one of those periods that breaks the balls of short term and sometimes long term investors too.
No one really knows what the next 5 to 10 years is going to bring either here in the U.S. or worldwide which is what is worrying people worldwide the most.
The market can't stand unknowns like we face right now worldwide.
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