Is Long Form Research Dead?

The long answer is no, but you can do very well in the markets without it.

I love to share on Stocktwits, Twitter, my blog, podcasts, and Momentum Monday…

I share what I am thinking and doing and not what you/others should do.

Because I share what I am doing, it keeps me accountable and improves my own investing. The extra benefit is the community that has developed.

I think that is also what makes the stock market so popular …like your favorite sports teams, is you can never get enough. Once you find your teams, you hunker down and argue and often build community.

I ignore long form analysis, Wall Street research, news and commentary, but I can’t get enough of the markets because I have set up a system that allows me to endlessly get satisfaction and profits from reading prices and ideas in my streams.

The reason Twitter resonated with me as a medium (and inspired me to start Stocktwits) was the complete flipping of the idea generation and research format. If you could share an idea quickly and clearly you got addicted to the format.

Give me an idea and a chart. Give them to me consistently and I will likely trust you. Four eyes are better than two and forty eyes are better than four especially if I have the power to curate.

Over time I have also created a very unique sentiment analysis that others can of course do. How you read it is of course another long story or ten books.

Over time, your timeline tells all and if you are good, you get discovered. It’s not for everyone of course because it’s a game with no real time horizon. Some people get discovered quickly and other toil in the darkness forever. It is not fair. Alas, life is not fair.

So get to the point Howard!!!

This week, I sold the rest of my Twitter. The price drop took me out. I did not want to sell the rest of my Twitter. I now wish I had sold the rest of my Twitter the moment Facebook imploded. I could have sold for $45/share.

People that follow me are asking me to elaborate on why I sold the rest last week.

The more part is what does not matter. I don’t do much thinking with stocks when it’s time to buy or sell.

I found the more I dig into a company/stock for research, the more difficult it became for me to change my mind once I own the stock.

Maybe Twitter reverses Monday and goes straight to $50.

Twitter, the company is not 40 percent different today at $30 than it was with the stock at $45.

I have no idea what will happen next. Trust me on one thing…nobody knows.

When a pitcher throws at a batter, everyone can speculate, but only the pitcher knows what he was doing.

We are all hitters when it comes to the markets. We are getting pitches all day from every angle at every speed. The pitchers (Goldman, JP Morgan, now anyone with a social following) and the market itself as a whole, are trying to make you look as bad as possible when you do swing and because the game is fueled by transactions, the more you swing the better. Your money fuels the machine and the game.

So please be careful who you follow and what you ask for.

Build a system that works for you. In baseball they would say work on your swing, your balance and your timing (not sure strength really matters in the markets).

Let the pitches come!

The beautiful thing about investing is there is no three strike rule.