To paraphrase Burton G. Malkiel’s excellent book, “Random Walk Down Wall Street”, I’ve titled my post “A Random Walk Down Equity Street”.
I guess today will be known as a somewhat “black” Friday for the STI plunging 112.23 points (3.61%) to 2,994.78 points. This follows massive losses on Thursday 4 August 2011 on Wall Street for both the Dow Jones Industrial Index (-512.76 points / -4.31%) as well as the broader S&P500 indices.
My own experience about investing in equities or stocks and shares is that truly, it is a random walk in that one is unable to consistently predict the price movement of individual securities. My own stock picks that generate winners have been largely due to blind luck plus a little bit of common sense and my losers have largely been to my own lack of understanding of the psychology of investing/trading ......