Article worth to readIt's a long write up on MM but worth reading. The company you were excited about owning always seems to be red. It’s down in the pre-market, it’s down during the day, and it’s down after-hours.
This isn’t necessarily because you’re a bad stock picker. It might mean the opposite. You might have a discovered a diamond in the rough. A company with fantastic earnings. Stellar management. Tremendous growth opportunities. Positive press releases. New developments. New products. Awards. Recognition. Plans for the future.
Yet the stock continues to drop.
Sure, every now and then there’s a tiny green day, but for the most part the stock is always red.
Understandably, this is frustrating. It can make you feel like a loser. Like you made a bad investment. Like you should just give up and buy index funds.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s entirely possible that your investment thesis is flawed, but if your stock is always red in the face of overwhelming positive news and growth potential, then it’s more likely that your stock is being manipulated by Wall Street.
Wall Street does this because they’ve also identified the stock as being great. Banks and hedge funds have teams of brilliant analysts working for them. They have super computers. Algorithms. They have programmers with a genius-level intellect. Economists. Statisticians. They run calculations and projections. They are exceptionally good at finding great companies.
We’ll call these companies gems.
Like most things, there is not an infinite supply of gems.
If you buy 100 shares of a gem, that means someone else cannot own those shares. If banks and hedge funds own less gems, they make less money.
Holding on to your gems might sound easy, but it’s not that simple. There will be immense pressure for you to sell. Wall Street’s stock manipulation is the equivalent of an annoying neighbor blasting loud music through your walls all day. Your neighbor isn’t a musician. And it’s not necessarily illegal. They just want you to pack up and move on.
Wall Street’s timeframe is different than yours. They have a lot more patience.
If you buy a stock on Monday and it drops 15% by Friday then you might begin to panic.
“I’m going to lose everything!”
“I’m an idiot!”
You check the stock message boards and see comments like, “This stock is going to zero.”
“Total garbage.”
“Only a moron would buy this stock.”
These comments reinforce your own thoughts that you might have made a mistake.
You look at what’s trending and see that some dumpster company is up 20% on basically nothing.
Now you’re really annoyed.
And maybe you sell…
…and Wall Street buys your gem.
Months go by and the stock stays flat. You think you’ve made a good decision. But then the earnings report comes out and the company has blown away expectations. Your gem jumps 30%.
You’re angry and want to buy back in, but months of red have conditioned you to believe that the stock will drop back down again.
So you wait.
But now the stock is creeping upwards every day.
You didn’t buy on Monday, and now the stock is more expensive on Friday.
Thinking you’ve missed the boat, you start looking for a new stock. After doing a lot of research you find what you believe is a great opportunity.
You buy in, and the cycle starts over.
It’s just red every day until you give up. At this point you’re looking at an index fund that’s going up 10-20% per year. “You know what? That’s not bad. At least I don’t have to deal with the stress.”
Wall Street wins, even though you were right. Your gem was a great company, you just weren’t patient enough.
Wall Street thinks in terms of years, but most investors think in terms of weeks, or even days. Regular people set their stop loss 5% below their purchase price. They get notifications when their stock drops. They get emails. Text messages. Hundreds of annoying little reminders that they’re dumb and they should sell.
Long term investors think differently. They might go weeks or months without checking in on their stocks. They’re confident in their decisions, and they don’t need the money any time soon. They can afford to wait out the stock manipulation.
While Wall Street has mastered the ability to manipulate a stock in the short term (less than a few years) they are unable to manipulate a stock in the long term.
This is because it would become too obvious. Imagine if Apple kept dropping every time they beat earnings. Eventually you’d get riots. The CEOs of banks and hedge funds would be dragged in front of congress. Regulation would be implemented to prevent this manipulation.