Seems pretty accurate to me. The most active thread on this forum is the long-term investor thread. Not very many people here who actively talk about trading.
being that you are a moderator and are required to read far more posts than i actually read i can't argue. there is probably empirical data to support both sides but i have no idea how it would be extracted.
The connection between the LTI thread and long term investing may not be as direct as it is assumed. That thread has some talk of bitcoin and stock ownership of well under 5 years in duration. Neither of these things constitute investing, IMO. Because of this, my statistics are apart from those of other people. It's just a point of view. That's not to say people who are holding small amounts of bitcoin aren't investors. I would fight to the death to support their right to identify as they wish. I'm just saying, my view of investing is particularly narrow. Several of the folks who identify as investors would be investor/traders to me.
Fair enough. If your criteria was strictly 5+ year investors, than yeah, there's more traders. Investments are commonly seen as 1+ year holds to the majority of people, so that is the baseline I went with for my comment. That's why I called myself investor that also trades as that's what I've become over the last 5 years. Mostly 1+ year holds, with some trading in the mix as well.
My view of investing is long term. I don't completely discount the idea that short term investing exists, there just aren't many examples. Again, just my opinion but, investing is to seek out making money from a productive asset like a company or an economy. A productive asset will generate new wealth. Making money from share price fluctuations is trading because the mindset is to make money from someone else in the market, making it a zero sum game.
I voted "Both, but weighted more in investing" -- in real numbers, my investment accounts total 94%, whereas my trading portfolio is only 6%. That said, since the trading portfolio is a lot more fun, I spend 94% of my time there Thanks @emmett kelly for both the read & resurrecting this poll
I think it's fair to say that long term investing has cleaned the floor with trading, the last while. Long term hold of VOO would have netted 29, 16, 27% in the last three years. Things are a bit more in flux, this calendar year. I wonder if this is the time when traders have the advantage? Perhaps it is possible to eek out returns when long term holders are treading water? Any thoughts?
Without a doubt, in my opinion, buy-and-hold investors TROUNCE the vast majority of traders...regardless of market conditions....but only a minority of buy-and-hold beat the market. So they definitely win out in the long run against other trading strategies, but not the market writ large, which is fine because their gains are comparable to the market writ large...which historically are very good over time. Now that said, it is also without doubt, again in my opinion, that there is a minority of traders who TROUNCE the market AND buy-and-hold investors. The current market conditions separate the wheat from the chaff, in terms of whether traders fall into the majority who lose...or the minority who beats...the buy-and-hold crowd. Just my 2-cents, not adjusted for current inflation!
For sure, V. Warren Buffett didn't become the richest man in the world by holding the S&P index. Lynch, Templeton, Ackman, and a few others have out performed the index. John C Bogle died with a net worth of $80M but he regularly gave half of his salary to charity and also regularly gave away a bunch of his core wealth, as well. He has said his goal was to keep his net worth under $100M. He has said he probably wouldn't have made it to a billion, even without giving money away. We don't know what they started with. It's different for people who start with dynastic wealth. Bill Ackman seeded Pershing Square with $54M in 2004 and Pershing became worth many billions but he has a lot of partners and he is far from the largest shareholder. Bill Ackman's current net worth is estimated at $3B so he has far out performed the S&P. Jack Bogle wasn't broke when he created Vanguard 500 but I have no idea how the numbers compare, after adjusting for inflation. Still, it seems obvious that a handful of people can out perform the market. As well as that evidence, everyone local to me outperform the market wildly. They all make 40% per quarter.
I don't know anymore. Lean towards investing but with what has hit the fan lately I just trade. Funny how COVID magically disappeared in time for the midterm elections. Glad I never took the shots.
