w
"Holdier than thou." I like that.
In fairness, there is a lot of chatter about options on this thread. I agree there is something to be learned from it.
I also think some folks may be led down the garden path and think options are somehow the preferred way to invest especially given the amount of this chatter and the crowing about successes. We don’t hear so much about the folks who have blown the bottom out of their financial boat with options.
I had FOMO in the winter of 2018 and thought the market would soon cotton on to Tesla’s great future. If I had traded options instead of buying shares on that thought about the market clueing in soon, I would have been sunk.
Predicting the future well ahead of others is notoriously difficult.
Timing options successfully is notoriously difficult.
For success, both require talent along with access to the right information and tools as well as experience. Excelling in one, especially at the upper reaches of performance, will pull you away from peak performance in the other in my opinion.
I believe each requires different ways of thinking, different states of mind, and probably different personality types because they are very different investment practices. In other words, people have to choose what suits them.
You can be proud of your investing track record. Though and not to put too fine a point on it, the early in, meaningful buy, and long hold strategy will in my experience stack up favorably against it; quite so in fact. Plus, one gets more delicious REM sleep.
edit: This is not to say a hold strategy is without risks or strain. Far from it. The summer of 2019 saw my winter of 2018 investment cut in half. Earlier purchases were down though not quite as much. That was a hard period to go through, but at least ‘all’ I needed to do was hold so my investment survived. I was truly glad to be a member of TMC and following this thread at that point. In fact, I even bought a few more shares at that point with some couch money. But, yeah, I might’ve lost some sleep then.