Patient Industry (No, it is not about hospitals!)

I used to keep a very detailed notebook of things that I've read and notes about the market. In fact, I wrote a post encouraging you to do the same. I have to admit that I've done less of that. However, I suppose that I could reasonably construe my blog as a notebook without feeling guilty of engaging in hyperbole.

Nevertheless, I do have notebooks of articles and other "stuff" that I've found of interest. I resurrected by "Stockcharts" notebook. I printed every single technical analysis article. It is every bit as good as any book that you could buy.

The print date shows these were printed on 11/06/2005. Yes, I probably spent an entire day printing out these pages. In fact, I also spent an entire weekend reading these from start to finish.

That effort is 2 1/2 years old. And I've much more experience under my belt. Accordingly, I thought that it would be a good refresher course for me to look at this material with "fresh" eyes. I'm a firm believer in the following tenets regarding investing/trading:There's a time to buy, sell and wait like a spider.

I'm also a firm believer that if you buy a stock regardless of how great the fundamentals appear to be, if the technical picture is looking a little frayed, then it may not be the time to buy. In fact, it might be the time to sell. Or, if the chart seems a bit indeterminate, you could merely wait like a spider. I suppose if I were a wildly successful investor, I could write a book called "Invest/trade Like a Spider".

Why the spider analogy? Admittedly, spiders creep many folks out. I happen to like them. I don't kill them in my home. But I don't have any spider tattoos either! What I like about the spider analogy is that it connotes an industry while waiting. Web-building spiders depend on their web location and building skills in order to capture the food payload. That's what I mean by the term "industry while waiting". Building the web is industry. And being patient and conserving resources in order to run out and secure the caught prey is an important part of success.

Part of our success, then, needs to be in cultivating "patient industry". Remember my project in Jan/Feb of uploading the ticker symbols into StockCharts? That was patient industry. And I've evolved that patient industry into reviewing charts and then looking at fundamentals. If there's an intersection, then I buy. I'm finding that my success has improved greatly by deploying this means. I'm also not underestimating experience either--I've more experience and can assimilate data more quickly and make a decision on it than I used to.

My patient industry is just that MY patient industry. It doesn't have to be YOUR patient industry; but do ensure that you have a patient industry.