goodbye fundamentals

To my mind, the useful information is in the charts. I can look at the fundamentals, earnings, revenues, mission statement, management resumes and interviews, and I can sense whether something might happen, but what? To answer the latter question, I have to look at the charts. I mean, yes, if a company looks fundamentally good, maybe it's a good long term investment, but I don't want to wait years, even decades, to find out if my hunches are correct.. Even if my hunches are incorrect, I'd rather know that within days or weeks, than not know for months or years. And I want to make money in weeks or months. Anybody can make money in years and decades. Just invest conservatively. I have dedicated a small amount of my money to the pursuit of short term profits, whatever the outcome. (This is not excessively risky. The money at risk is not, in any way, borrowed money. I may loose my money, but I won't go into debt.)

When I look at a chart, I know, immediately, what I think the stock is going to do next. If I study the charts carefully, I can predict when a stock will move, and where the move will begin and end, and how long the move will take. I don't get that information from the fundamentals. Maybe it's possible to do that, but I'm not seeing it.

The fundamentals are interesting. If you're interested in business, company financial statements are a place to read about business dealings. It's all very, very complicated. There's a reason people in management are highly paid: it's a rare person who can keep up with the job. If we want to be that kind of person, reading financial statements might provide useful insights.

But, if our purpose is to buy and sell stocks, and just be investors, I still advocate for using charts. In the last few posts, I have stopped talking about the fundamentals. I mean, I mention that a stock is big, or not, and that's kind of the most basic thing you can say about the fundamentals, but it's kind of a side story. It might be safer to invest in big companies, or not. The real story, I think, is in the chart. And I account for the uncertainty in my predictions by not overinvesting, and by being persistent. I have an overall losing history in the stock market, but I've been working at it for a long time, I've been doing better, and I'm not giving up.