Indian Ticker : Choose Right Stocks that Ticks Money

Secret #5: Stay away from “glitter” stocks

There are many thousands of stocks to choose from: in the USA over 10,000 stocks, in Canada over 3000 and in Australia over 1,500. Faced with these massive numbers and the associated deluge of information, investors get drawn to what I call glitter stocks. These are stocks that have some attention grabbing activity such as high trading volume, extreme movements in the price whether up or down, or when the stocks are in the news.

Even with the best of intentions, it is hard to look at these stocks in a clear and objective manner compared to the remaining stocks. Warren Buffett was so aware of this that he moved from New York back to his home town, Omaha, Nebraska. Regarding the benefits of living in Omaha, he said, “I think it’s a saner existence here. I used to feel, when I worked back in New York, that there were more stimuli just hitting me all the time… It may lead to crazy behavior after a while.” He ended by stating that it is much easier to think in Omaha.

A research study by Brad Barber and Terrence Odean of the University of California demonstrates very clearly the penalty to be paid by getting drawn into glitter stocks. They found that, on average, individual investors tended to invest in glitter stocks more than professionals. Secondly, they found that by doing this they underperformed the market by anything from around 2.8 percent to 7.8 percent per annum.

Buffett has long understood this. For example, back in 1985 he said, “Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.”

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.