Snap decisions

The time to deliberate any investment-related decision is after market hours -- certainly not during! Decisions made during market hours tend to be ill-founded, as they are typically arrived at in the heat of battle. This time period is particularly ill-suited for investing decisions because each new tick can provide too much suasion, especially in this increasingly illiquid market. (A discussion for another time.) This reason is but one professional investors develop rules to keep their portfolios out of harm's way.

Although decisions to buy or sell might appear to be snap decisions, they are anything but that. Note the subsequent failures of EBAY, FLIR, and SBUX to highlight (lowlight?) three examples. (There are many other examples that were warned about here, in advance of their horrific declines. These seemingly snap decisions no longer appear as particularly hasty, eh?) A real time example could be Nike/NKE, as the shares might break down from what I previously had perceived as a base, but suddenly (possibly, probably) manifest as a top. We shall see.

Things change; s**t happens. Keep abreast of the market, or suffer the consequences. No matter how lengthy your investing time frame, what once was superlative could, in a heartbeat, become merely comparative. And perhaps even less.