"...but I digress"

I scanned through a few blogs and found one that looked interesting and that was supposed to follow this guy on his journey to get rich through investing. I read the post from March 25, 2007 that outlined initial purchases and the plan going forward was to include some sort of DCA strategy to enter into a few index ETFs. Buy and hold.

The blog petered out as the market dropped out. March 07 was near the peak...there was no index money to be made past that point, in any long term long only method. Market euphoria was still firmly in place and everyone and their dog thought they could make money in the market.

Rather than chronicling his utter failure and attempting to plan an alternate strategy he must have considered the failure as a sign that he should not attempt to dabble in the market at all.

This is typical of the majority of traders, according to the 90% plus that fail at trading, no secondary plan, no diversity in strategies and no wider vision. Jump in, lose and jump out.

I was starting my journey late in 2007 and cashed out all of my mutual funds in December and January. Nicely timed even if it was not designed to capture the peak... but I am not trying to blow my own horn here, but my timing was bang on if only because I recognized that shorter term trading with no or lower MER products was more likely to work out. I was just looking at things at the right time.

A few days ago I talked to a fellow about trading and investing, he was the investing sort. Through the drop he lost, on paper, the typical 30% of his portfolio. His portfolio has returned to an 8% loss to date. Not too shabby of a return, given the circumstances. The trouble I would have is that, in his case, this was his retirement plan. He has had to move hie retirement plan back a number of years.

Jeff.