You call yourself a long term investor but are you really?
Do you even really know what you are invested into? If you are invested in stocks, cryptos, currencies are commodities, do you know why you invested in them. Do you understand everything about each of the companies behind those investments, what partnerships they have, how their balance sheet is looking, all the fundamentals? What if you bought into something at $50 and you watched it drop down $30, down to $18, down to $12. What are you doing? Jumping ship or watch the price tank?
The great thing is the easiest option is the best long term. You, well... you watch the price tank and wait for better days and better days will come. Let's say you invest in a holding company A for $1000. Alphabet or Meta would be examples of holding companies. You did your research and saw the company has a positive cash flow, no debt and it provides goods and services that you think will still be in demand in 20-30 years time.
Let's say HoldingCompanyA owned 20 companies that are collectively worth $200 million. They have 100 million shares issued. These shares do not reflect the value of HoldingCompanyA, in the same way, SPI's hive-engine price is not SPI's real price. If you invested your $1000 and got 500 shares at the cost price, you would have paid $2 each. Now if the price of HoldingCompanyA were to drop to $1.50 and then $1, you might panic sell. You might be thinking why would you panic sell when you know the shares are backed by $2 of assets? That's the thing, most people dont know because they dont do the research. If you are clued up, you would know to invest more because when the market turns and it always turns, you could potentially make a killing.
Most people have no idea why they invest in anything. Im no better to be honest. How many millions of people own Telsa stocks or bought into the DOGE because of Elon Musk? Lots of us will invest in our favourite brands just because we like them. Nothing wrong with that but a little research can go a long way.
After you pick your investment, you hold. The longer the better because the market goes through cycles and the more cycles you can go through the more profit you can make. As I said, lots of people call themselves long term investors but dump when the market crashes because they dont know what they are invested in, they dont understand it so they dump it.
Think of every ever investment you ever made. I mean stocks, bonds, cryptos and everything else and think about what you still hold today. Damn I wish I keep my google shares for about a decade longer than I did, I'd be the fooking man today if I did but I didn't and I sold them for a small profit that I frittered and pissed away. Most of us will have sold more things than we hold either at a loss to panic exit, sell for a small profit or sell to fund another investment.
The correct thing to do is just hold, if you know your investment is sound and the people running it is productive, you just hold. Look, none of us a good enough to time the market, you are much more likely to lose money and the stress is pointless when you can just hold. All asset classes go through cycles with most being different, the property markets cycle lasts roughly 18 as an example. I'd assume cycles lengthen over time and the property market is older than the stock market. Probably not but maybe.
When markets go down, they can go down alot and it might happen more frequently then you think. Over the past 100 years in the stock markets, 10% declines in the overall market happened 51 times so roughly every 2 years. These are called corrections. 25% declines in the overall market happen on average every 6 years. These are called bear markets. Markets can go down at any moment, nobody knows when, nobody can predict it and nobody can guess how deep the cut will be.
When you know the market is going to go down, you'll understand that your investment value will decline but that's ok because you're not selling today. After you understand that your investments could drop 20-80% over the course of 2-4 years coupled with understanding the fundamentals of your investment, it should make it really easy to hold because you know that the markets will always go up again. They go up and down, up and down.
Holding an index tracker is the easiest way to get more exposure to the overall markets. History shows that stock markets will increase by an average of 8% per year and the value of the stock market doubles every 9 years. When you know this, it really easy to hold and double up every 9 years. Going through 4 cycles would take roughly 36 years and yield a x16 return based on a 100-year history. If you in your 20's, you could go through 5 cycles for an x32 return. 40-50% of your profit will be eaten by inflation but that's ok because anything over inflation is good because you'd be increasing your spending power. Bank accounts, bonds, anything under 4% is no good unless that's a loan percentage 😉 Borrowing under-inflation can be good.
Back to holding, that's all there is to it. You buy and hold, you buy more and you hold, you see the market is down 25% for the past 6 months, may be a good time to invest some more and then hold. Individual stocks are one thing but index trackers are another and one thing is for certain with index trackers, the markets will always go up and they will always produce a profit. If you look at a 10-year chart, you'll see that they will always go up. If you lost money on an index tracker, you only sold at the wrong time. I know that sounds bullshit but information translates to $ with investing or if you are investing money to might need to pull out, you shouldn't be investing. Build a safety net fund first.
So, my point is to research and know what you are investing in. Everyone says this but I really mean it, looks at the balance sheets even if you dont understand them, you do it 10 times and you'll learn something, you do it 100 times and you start to understand what everything means, you do it 1000 times and everything makes sense and you can see things you never saw before, things that could make your mind up on investing or not.
After you pick your investment, hold it. If you are lazy, that's ok, invest in an index tracker like the sp500. You buy it and just hold it. It's very boring and not alot happens day to day in stocks but that's perfect because you can just buy them, set them on auto reinvest divs and forget about them.
Personally, I've stacked alot of silver, I bought most between 2012 and 2017 and was lucky to place my biggest ever order when the price was under $12 per oz. Not timed just lucky as I'd just come into some money. I've never sold an oz and because of that, im fairly certain I'll never lose money on silver. My avg cost per oz is under $15 and all I've done with it is hold it. It could drop 20% that's ok, that's gonna happen sometime. With silver today at $22 today. I'd bet its next $10 movement which would bring it to either $12 or $32 will see it at $32. What about the next $2 movement? i dont care. I could have invested in the stock market and doubled my investment but I did not know back then what I know now and silver looked really good at the time as a store of value. Either way, just hold. That's all it takes to be a long term investor, you dont panic sell when the market crashes, you dont sell when the market is up to buy a new car, you just hold. Adding more is cool, infact, it's advised. Per cost averaging and buying the bear markets could boost your overall ROI.
Anyways, I've gone on long enough. I see alot of money being made in crypto and the good times will not last forever. Sorry to the Debby Downer (sorry if you name is Debby) but what goes up will go down and then up again, and then down again and this will last for a really long time, longer than you are your children will live. Could be a good idea to maybe convert some profits out to traditional investments because it's never a bad idea to have nest eggs in different asset classes.
I'd like SPI to be involved with stocks but im worried about holding the stocks in my personal account because that would mess about my tax-free benefits. I could always use a mobile app, im ok with doing KYC. Anyways, im still hopeful for a bullrun this coming summer. We will know the state of the market much better in September as I think we head into 2023 bearish, very bearish. Bargains will be had and SPI will be there to snip up all the best shit at 90% off.
Hoped you enjoyed the post. Holding is the only way to go, the only way to be able a long term investor. The stock market doubles every 9 years, the crypto market is faster. There's is nothing wrong with holding BTC in a cold wallet, it'll probably still outperform the stock market for another decade.
Have a great day folks.