Please note: GorillaTrades is a registered trademark of GorillaTrades, Inc. Neither WealthJunkie.com, its publisher, nor the authors of these articles have any affiliation with the GorillaTrades service.
As I prepare to live life on my own terms, I have been struggling. The conflict is between my two viewpoints on the stock market, and the execution strategies of each. On one side is my long-term investor, continuously searching for the ideal company. And on the other: the guy that needs to put food on the table.
Mr. Long-Term Investor, as we call him, has been largely influenced by Peter Lynch, and learned from Warren Buffett and Ben Graham as well. This guy wants to keep plowing money into his favorite companies, as long as their shares are attractively priced. He tries to be a rational thinker.
Although he has only been in the market a short time, this guy knows he has to sit and wait for companies to grow. That is not easy. And he knows it. But he also knows that he will benefit in the long run if he stops making rash decisions and lets things play out.
There is also an evil twin. Mr. Short-Term Trader. He is Mr. Long-Term Investor’s evil nemesis. He is the guy that will soon be unemployed. And he must do something about it.
Yes, he has some money saved. In fact, he is doing everything to minimize his cost of living. He can probably even live for a few years without earning a penny. But that is not enough. Because before they even get there, his wife is asking how he will earn money. What is the answer?
He wants to be a writer. He looks forward to starting his career. He even managed to publish a few articles while he worked full-time. (The clips should help get his foot in the door.) But to his wife, Mrs. Split-Personality, this is not enough.
He knows that there are thousands of opportunities at his fingertips. He has dozens of business ideas, everything from web sites to becoming a scuba divemaster. If he had to, he would even sell cars or timeshares (mostly because he wants the experience of a sales job).
But what he really likes is stocks. And he would love to earn a living in the stock market.
Yes, he will encounter plenty of critics along the way. But critics are not always right. If he wants it bad enough, and he works for it, our man knows he will triumph.
A few days ago, Mr. Short-Term Trader read about someone that shorted 50,000 shares of COSI because he knew the stock would drop after their earnings announcement. The stranger was right. The stock tanked. And the mysterious man, known only by his screen name on the Yahoo Forums, made $45,000 in less than 24 hours.
Was it just luck? Perhaps. But our man does not believe in luck. He thinks luck is created, and just a matter of perspective. The real question, he asks, is: how can I do this?
Our man would love to find an easy way out. He would love to snuggle up to a service like GorillaTrades.com, and let them take him to fame and fortune. It may work. But how can he trust them?
There are no guarantees. And the easy way may not be the best one. Our man knows that. Ultimately, he must find his own path. He must ask others and try to learn from them. But he cannot rely on them to feed his family.
Mr. Long-Term Investor and Mr. Short-Term Trader are like Yin and Yang. They are polar opposites. But, in the immortal words of Paula Abdul, “opposites attract.”
Can these two philosophies co-exist? Can Mr. Long-Term Investor and Mr. Short-Term Trader maintain a cease-fire long enough for my family to prosper? Where do I start?
This is the challenge. It is my Everest. And I am excited to begin.
I look forward to your thoughts.
May 16th, 2005 at 9:46 am
I can relate. Overall, I tend to be more of a LT investor, but Mr. Short-term comes out every once in awhile. As I get older and see that Mr. ST does not generally make me money, I end up spending more and more time with a long-term view.
May 18th, 2005 at 11:51 am
Alexander Y. Barbara you seem to be the sterotypical accountant engineering type with no other logical systematic approach of analysis other than the thirst for negativity found even in your own approach to stock investing. Constantly I see you condem amd critizie websites, such as gorilla trades without even having the
“balls”, persay, to even take their advice and try it for yourself. If I was to use the approach by which you tend to invest it would be just as insane if not more insane than any other investors decision making skills. Your personality places you in the category of emotionally damaged due to logical structures that you have endeared upon yourself as a person for you entire life sprinkled with negativity and biased decision making practices. Not only have you stated that you could never have someone else make money for you as a person, because you pride yourself in making your own analysis and doing it your way, but you also compare orginizations, such as gorilla trades with american bull, knowing that you don’t agree with either of them; then you end up critizising both for no apparent reason. What in the hell are you talking about when you write. If you dont agree with the investing solutions websites then why would you compare two different investment solutions to each other, asserting that “american bull says wait but gorilla trades says buy”, when in the first place you don’t agree with either orginization, however from the above statement it would seem that you believe in american bull but not in gorilla trades. You contradict yourself so much with your logical system of belief I have yet to understand why this website has hired you to write jibberish that I could come up with myself. Apparently you have not educated yourself enough to understand that your ability to “conclude” is fogged due to your lack of ability to understand that your sylogistical logical skills died with the invention of quantificational logics back hundreds of years ago. You assert that you know “A”, “A” being the truth to stock investing solutions, however your system “A” also includes other systems that you have learned from the past, being from american bull, college and other sources of information. By making yourself to believe that your know “A” just as gorilla trades konws “A” you end in contradcition, therefore making yourself a complete and utter lunatic just like any other joe blow out there. I will explain, “A” is a set which contains variouse beliefs that you can considered valuable to your investing decisions. But others assert that they have taken your set and placed it under their hood of investing strategies, however you cannot have your “A” be the end all but also be contained under a hood of someone elses end all strategy, therefore “A” being “A” yet containing “A” makes a huge contradiction and you come out to be a complete contradction. In fact logically speaking of stock investing, being that the stock market works off of logics and math, (if not logical then emotional, emotional means nothing but a gamble which proves the point that once again you know nothing but how to pull the handle of a slot machine), your emotional approach and contradictive analysis proves a point that Soren Kierkengaard wrote about long ago, your mind has become cluttered by the seductive processes of other men and because of this you are left with nothing but a chaotic spiral of confusion, without logics but with logics. Being that “A” cannot be “A”, “A” being the endall approach to stock investing, due to the fact that “A” contains itself as a member of various approaches to stock investing, you have proven you advice completely useless and utterly uneducated. Rather than write each and every day about you dark chaotic swirl of misunderstanding of various systems of investing, go to therapy and tell the therapist that you cannot make decisions nor try new patterns of ideas becuase you have a limited belief system that does nothing but give you permisssion to find the negative within contradictive belief systems you have gathered from past readings and experience, in fact I doubt you have experience. Try something before you bash something, try gorilla trades, try something new, try a different approach rather than set yourself up as a religious idol, then tell us the outcome but dont come here telling us you konw this and that and which way to do things unless you name is God and I have been decieved by a dark spirit to think that you are in fact Alex. You speak of with the tongue of a prideful two year old child, without experience in these new trade forms such as gorilla trades. I have seen more that enough people think they know the way to light and truth as concerns the stock market yet by reading your latest I guess you are the guru and the endall. Thanks for proving to me you are just another idiot, and I hope that Wealthjukies supply you with the correct insurance plan to go get help from the religiosity problem of beliefs that you have.
January 20th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Twenty Jan O’Six
Sorry I only got to reply a year late.
Congratulations! You just ran into Mr (Ms?) NO-IT-ALL and survived. Pay no heed to NO; just keep on learning and remember the spirit of life is all about YES!:[Yearning, Effort, Success] and we all wind up in the same “revolving door” but it’s much more fun to laugh than cry!
emo
ps Don’t feel bad about your split personality, at least you have only two; “Leonce” is stuck with one!
pps I’m on a 30-day “free trial” with The Gorilla and survived today’s Wall Sreet meltdown with only first-degree “burns” =:)
February 13th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Don’t put all your investing eggs in one basket. I would like to try Gorilla with some of my IRA which would eliminate taxes as a factor. Maybe I’ll go with 25% of my investments and see how it works after a year.
March 12th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
It is per se.
May 1st, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Leonce tries to condemn you for evaluating a product and giving your assessment of it from your viewpoint. I never felt that you claimed to be “God” or a demon,etc, trying to assert your “truth” (opinion) as gospel. Frankly, Leonce’s laborious attempts to say that “A” can’t be “A” but is a subset of “A” and therefore excludes “A” tells me that Leonce is an “A”-hole…LOL.
Anyone that feels that your writing about a product that makes claims can’t be performed, (or at least by you since he feels that you are already biased by past life(s) influences) and then rants about it in such a ridiculous manner is a “supreme idiot”. I bet everyone that isn’t part of group “A” but is part of group “A” who couldn’t join group “A” understands that this was just an article exploring product claims. It’s no different than Consumers Report. I think Leonce needs to return back to the psychiatric ward for further treatment.
February 11th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
I would have to agree. as far as reading this article group so far i would have to say that i’ve taken it merely as an opinion of some one else. not a self idolizing asshole shoving his opinion down my throat as fact. but thats just me..
February 16th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Thanks for all your Gorilla Trades comments and experiences. You all have saved me the trouble of wrestling with the monkey. I am an avid reader of Smart Money magazine and have done very well with their recommendations and market news. I thought their might be an easier way, but alas, money is time and time is money. I’ll stick with my own savvy and Smart Money.
Thanks again, all!
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Alex GTFO!! You are still an idiot…even two years later.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Hi Leonce,
I guess it has been two years so I probably ought to share how things have been going.
We have been fully self-employed for the past two years. In addition, our stock investments have generated a very healthy amount of cash over the past two years which have certainly made it easier for us to do a lot of things - like buy a motorhome and a second home.
Leonce, I really do wish you the best of luck in your endeavors. But from where I’m standing, it looks like you are far out in left field.
Have a nice day.