BUY AND HOLD DEAD?
Markets have been very difficult this year. The volatility has made it tough at times.
Who knows when something might happen in the
news to cause your favourite share to soar or tank?
FTSE 100 shares have been worst hit by the volatility and that's why in the main I have steered clear of them.
I prefer looking further down the market for smaller growth companies and this has paid off for me well this year.
People say buy and hold is dead. But then again it's been quite hard to trade often too as stop losses wherever set have been swept up by the market.
You may be surprised but some shares have done quite well this year despite all the craziness. If you'd got the right ones in January you could have just bought and hold and made decent money.
My favourite this year has been Telecom Plus which rose from 450 to around 750 at the moment,a nice percentage and two dividend payouts too!
In fact it even went up on ex dividend date last week!
A nice defensive company, one could have bought in January, made a heap of money and have an income despite market falls. It markets phone lines, mobiles, and energy, stuff everyone uses. It's made me a fortune this year.
I've had good buy and hold success with another phone company, Alternative Networks which has risen from 150 to 280. Has tons of cash too and a good steady business mostly unaffected by any downturn.
Same comment to Coastal Energy. That's more than doubled from 300 to around 800 now. I didn't get in till around 450 but that's been a great buy and hold trade.
An oiler which just keeps on releasing positive statements time and time again, finding more and more oil.
Avon Rubber is another, up from 200 to 300 over the year which is after all 50% ! And a dividend. Supplies defence masks andhas a steady dairy business.
Dialight has managed 500 to 750, again another steady business with cash and rising profits.
All have helped to make it a better year for me so far that it certainly would have been without them!
Will I carry on holding them? Nothing is certain in the markets but for now I have every intention of keeping hold of most of these gems for longer.
What really sums them all up? Plenty of cash or low debt, continually rising profits and dividends and positive outlooks.
If however you had bought and held anything with big debt, a risky oil play, anything out of favour such as a retailer you would be nursing heavy losses. Then you could possibly argue buy and hold is dead.
The point really is stock selection is becoming more and more important but I continue to think that it will be possible to unearth good winners, even if 2012 is in general a stinker. Some company, somewhere will do well.
Best to look for companies with a nice cash pile and rising dividends, preferably in what looks like a growth market.
In another topic Advfn has a great new feature which I'm already using, called "News alerts"
You'll love it especially if you have been caught out by a market-moving announcement that happened when you weren't around.
Click "alerts" at the top of the page, then "news alerts".
Then just stick in the shares you are interested in and everytime a
news story is published you will know about it.. brilliant!!
Worth looking at the other alerts too. Shares alerts is interesting as that alerts you when a share hits a price, perhaps your stop loss or your target etc.
I'll certainly be adding this great feature to my next book, in the meantime a reminder the edition of Naked Trader has been recently published, you can get it here at the advfn bookstore.