It’s a wild ride, that stock market, isn’t it? One day it’s up, the next day it’s down.
Or maybe it’s the other way around.
Regardless
Panic in the streets, or that’s what it seems like when reading the many headlines. Lots of activity, people buying and selling. More of one than the other on each and every day.
Volume
All that action, and why? People seem to think they will edge out others and claim a profit. Well, maybe they will and maybe they won’t. People dream, people justify, people scream and shout. But nobody really knows what will happen.
It seems like many people are thinking “Someone is making money, it might as well be me.” Supposedly that justifies everything else.
Sometimes I surmise that the gatekeepers are making the money, not the actual traders. It is somewhat analogous to the shovel salesmen are the ones who made the money, not the prospectors.
Stability is Non-Existent But Achievable
Sounds impossible to say that in one sentence. What do we mean that “Stability is Non-Existent But Achievable”?
In our workaday world, stability is ephemeral. Stability is exists only for fleeting, short times. Our stocks go up and we feel wonderful, our stocks go down and we are depressed.
Another Day
That is why I don’t trade. I buy and hold. I buy dividend stocks, let the dividends accumulate by dividend reinvestment. Then I go about my life.
The news shouts, the news cries. The news is there is I want it, but do I need it? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Most of the time, I have space in my life for other things.
The dividends roll in whether I am happy or sad or glad or sick or joyful or just plain asleep. As Warren Buffett is quoted as saying, “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”
Now I am the first to say that dividends are not always as rock solid as I would like. Sometimes they are cut, some times they are eliminated. And many times they grow. So that is why I cannot and will not rely on one company or one industry alone. Owning stock in multiples companies in multiple industries is the better bet. At any one time, some companies and some industries are expanding, and some companies and some industries are declining.
This evens out over time. And time is the most important factor of all. Start saving and investing early for best results.
Comments? Let me know here.
Illustrated is a watercolor by Raffaele Mainella for the book “Nos Invisibles,” 1907 by Charles d’Orino, nom de plume for Clotilde Briatte (1850–1910). Courtesy Internet Archive.
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