[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Looks like 60 minutes might be worth a looksee tonight. Wyatt’s Torch gave me a heads up. It,s on a book coming out “Flash Boys” about high frequency trading and a piece on Elon Musk and SpaceX.

[expat_panama]

...average increase in my portfolio on an annual basis is 16.5% since 1983. And only one down in year 31 years, with less than 1% loss in 2008...

For me that's a great balance between return/volatility, but of course that's a choice only the individual investor can make. 

This weekend I was looking at stock strategy screens and came across http://www.aaii.com/files/PDF/9143_2013-Stock-Screens-The-Year-of-the-Bulls.pdf (it came out last November) and in it is this--

--which means (for example) using the "Piotroski: High F-Score" stock screen has typically been able to yield almost 32%, but that means putting up with an occasional 42% loss in one month before the high returns kick back in.  Not everyone's willing to put up with that.  I know I'm not.  The good news is we got soo much to choose from all we have to do is decide.

Abi, the thing to remember with those returns is that 15%/year means you double your money every 5 years --that means if Catfish began in '83 w/ $100 and never spent a penny, then he's now got $25,600 because that's 8 doublings..  otoh, using a more aggressive strategy at say, 30%/year, it means he would have gotten 16 doublings, leaving Catfish with $6,553,600 and a stomach full of ulcers...

[expat_panama]

...“Flash Boys” about high frequency trading...

Unfortunately this is past my bed time, but please let me know how they show it.  What I'm seeing is the loopy-left press is using flash trades and yet another excuse for more mindless laws against investing.  A quick google shows we got a lynch mob forming that includes our favorite drive-by's: Bloomberg, CNBC, CBS, etc. etc.

It's a controversial hot button topic, but I can tell you for a fact that flash trades add to profits.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Wow, sorry I missed 60 mins; sounded interesting.