I Don't Pick Stocks, Stocks Pick Me

I don’t pick stocks, homeboy – stocks pick me.

After too much time wasted looking for the next 10% pop, I’ve become a bit of a reborn top-downer.  My research yields the theme and the stock plays make themselves apparent; I don’t have to go looking for ’em.

I had a few beers in NYC the other night with two up-and-coming financial bloggers who also happen to be recovering daytraders.  Like me, they’ve been coming around to the joys of holding and growing versus the Sisyphean buying and selling they had originally been drawn to.

I outlined my newfound love of identifying the mega-movements, the multi-year trends and the super-cycles.

I talked about my new investing sport in which I paddle in front of the biggest wave I can see coming and then I hang on despite the sometimes deafening roar of short-term news flow and uninformed opinion.

I had forgotten about what it felt like to be on that wave.  The simultaneous volatility and certainty – Violence and Serenity sharing an ice cream sundae.  And as I look above and around me at the cresting rip curl, so enveloped within the turquoise wall of water that I can smell the brine, the very last thing on my mind is the brand of board my feet are planted on.  Almost any board will do.

Lest anyone get confused, playing a super-cycle does not preclude active trading or attention to stock selection.  Trading while playing a long-term theme is no less necessary than adjusting one’s stance while riding in the big one.  There are positions to be added to and trimmed, new names to incorporate, wrong holdings that no longer fit the story to be jettisoned.  This ain’t your daddy’s buy-and-hold.

I’m out looking for where the money is being made and will continue to be made; I’ll go anywhere in pursuit of that.  When you’re doing research with that mindset, the stocks will find you on their own.