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If You Have to Be Right, Trouble Ahead

“I confess, I think about the future. So do my colleagues. If someone who’s spent decades investing doesn’t have an opinion about what lies ahead, there’s something wrong. I believe our clients want us to apply the benefit of our experience in gauging and reacting to the opportunities and risks that lie ahead.
But I have a mantra on this subject, too: “It’s one thing to have an opinion; it’s something very different to assume it’s right and act on that assumption.” We have views on the future. And they can cause us to “lean” toward offense or defense. Just never so much that for the results to be good, our views have to be right.”
–Howard Marks, Oaktree Capital Management January 10, 2012

Marks is not a technical trend follower, but wise words about not worrying about being right.
The Dead saw it too:
Drivin’ that train
High on cocaine
Casey Jones you better
watch your speed
Trouble ahead
Trouble behind
and you know that notion
just crossed my mind

 
Trouble with you is
The trouble with me
Got two good eyes
but we still don’t see
Come round the bend
You know it’s the end
The fireman screams and
The engine just gleams

Mark Cuban On Story Stocks

Don’t Miss to Read :
Different catalysts matter for the different time frames. In short-term perspective, price momentum is the most powerful catalyst. Short-term could sometimes be a couple years in the market. Here are a few wise words, written in 2004, by someone who has been on both sides of the table – as a shareholder and company owner:

For years, a company’s price can have less to do with a company’s real prospects than with the excitement it and its supporters are able to generate among investors. That lesson was reinforced as I saw the Gandalf experience repeated with many different stocks over the next 10 years. Brokers and bankers market and sell stocks. Unless demand can be manufactured, the
stock will decline.
If the value of a stock is what people will pay for it, then Broadcast.com was fairly valued. We were able to work with Morgan Stanley to create volume around the stock. Volume creates demand. Stocks don’t go up because companies do well or do poorly. Stocks go up and down depending on supply and demand. If a stock is marketed well enough to create more demand from buyers than there are sellers, the stock will go up. What about fundamentals? Fundamentals is a word invented by sellers to find buyers. (more…)

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