You’ve surfed innocently past Fox News a thousand times, every time you’ve checked for something good on TV. If you peak in on what shows like Glenn Beck say every now and then, then you know it’s all about bashing the Democrats and buying gold.
But littered amongst their mildly biased and often impractical advice (“Communists are coming to your house soon so buy lots of guns and gold”) you get horrifying stock tips that border on intellectual mutilation.
Inexperienced traders have an obsession with the price of a stock. I’m not just talking about that borderline retard you know who never bought Google because he could only buy a couple of shares!
I’m talking about the newbie trader who will miss an opportunity to buy or sell because he waited for a certain price.
Republicans who are unhappy that Democrats continue to win more and more seats in the House and Senate, or that a black man won the last Presidential election, tune in to Republican controlled Fox News. They then transform into newbie traders/investors after watching shows like O’Reilly or Glenn Beck.
These new investors believe Glenn Beck and other gold bugs who predict that gold will rise to $5,000/oz. and silver to $200/oz.
This is the same garbage that was put out by the hard core conservatives known as the Hunt Brothers. In 1979, these activist-Republicans attempted to corner the silver market by buying massive amounts of silver and then going on news programs claiming that gold would rise to $1,000/oz. and silver to $100/oz. Silver prices ultimately collapsed to below $11 an ounce months later. Hunt filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code in September 1988, largely due to lawsuits incurred as a result of his hyping silver. In 1989 in a settlement with the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Nelson Bunker Hunt was fined $10 million and banned from trading in the commodity markets as a result of charges of conspiring to manipulate the silver market stemming from his attempt to corner the market in silver. Not only did gold not hit $1,000 an oz until 30 years later, but silver never hit $100/oz.
Anyone who bought gold and silver based on what these Republicans were saying would have had to wait over 30 years for gold to hit $1,000/oz. and they would still be waiting for silver to hit $100/oz. In other words, they bought at the right time, but today, over 30 years later, they’re still waiting for the markets to hit these predicted price targets.
Their mistake was that they were thinking in terms of price and not in terms of time. If the time was right to exit gold and silver, then what did it matter if the price was right?
Thousands of ignorant investors thought if Ford had declined from over $34 per share in 1999 to $12.50 per share in 2002, that it was dirt cheap. At $6.25 it was a smoking hot deal cheap. At $3 it was the buy of the century. At $1 per share, the company is knocking on the doors of bankruptcy.
Price was unimportant—time was the critical factor. Was the time right for investing in Ford? Clearly it was not! Those who acted on price alone lost money. Those who refused to buy the stock because the TIME to buy was not right were spared considerable grief and losses.
I learned that if my TIMING is right in buying a stock, selling a stock, or sitting on the sidelines, then the PRICE was right no matter what it was. What may look expensive one day may be seen as very cheap a few days later, if the timing of a move is correct. Perhaps the most important lesson you will learn from me is NOT to think in terms of price but rather to think in terms of time and timing. If the time to take a given form of action is right, then the price must be right, no matter what it is.
So the next time you get a not so hot stock tick from Fox News that has to do with gold hitting $2,000/oz. just give them the finger. The finger pressing the up arrow that changes the channel that is. What did you think I meant?
Lance Jepsen
President, GuerillaStockTrading.com
Your Trading Coach
(because everyone, even Lyoto Machida, needs a coach)
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