My quibble was just about the “no investment approach is totally wrong.” For example, I think the astrological approaches are totally wrong, even if at times it lines up with some commonly observed calendar anomalies. But it’s the calendar anomaly that is driving things, not that Mercury has entered retrograde, or that the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars.
As for whether intuitive investing is possible, I do think that sometimes intuitions are based on insights that a person hasn’t bothered or been able to put ino words. They can align with sensible insights. For example, bromion probably has an intuition about what companies might be frauds and therefore shortable. He backs it up by doing due diligence to confirm his intuition, but the initial identification of companies is likely based at least partly on intuition. So intuition can be a useful investment tool in some cases, but it is almost never employed independently.
More often, people who claim to be intuitive or intangible investors simply use this as an excuse not to do the due diligence and work that good stock picking actually requires. They just think “wow, this product is good - it’s going to sell a lot” without looking at margins or cost of capital or competitive structure. Or “the management said something smart, so they’re going to whip the competition” without looking at their ability to execute that idea. There’s often little analysis about whether the rest of the market has the same intuition, which - if so - can lead to chasing returns with no regards to valuation considerations.
^ Agree. Specially with the astrological basis (which in my opinion is more of humbug!) and the fact that “More often, people who claim to be intuitive or intangible investors simply use this as an excuse not to do the due diligence and work that good stock picking actually requires.”
LOL @ bchad. The following will give you a heart attack.
What I mean by there is no randomness in the stock market, it is just that. No randomness. Price fluctuations are never random. They move with a purpose and aim. Only when that purpose or aim is achieved, will it reverse. But not before then. Many traders understand to not fight the ocean wave. But not many can tell you why the wave suddenly stops and decides to reverse. And I don’t mean explaining it by supply and demand which is one way of understanding why it reverses.
The stock market predicts. It anticipates. Barring natural disaster, which I haven’t seen myself, many things are heavily predictable. Nobody cares about whether Putin will invade Ukraine or not. Everyone cares about how the invasion will impact the market. If it has any relevance, it will show up.
Old George is not going to tell you the real reason he sold out. It is bad for business. Investors will pull out immediately. I would.
I don’t practice astrology. But I also don’t dismiss it. Do you have a deep understanding of astrology? If not, why do you dismiss it? And if you’ve read various books on business cycles, you would not easily dismiss astrology.