A site to discuss general world and local trends 0 comments

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It has become clear to me that it is often a losing game to play a short-term strategy in the stock market. I have often speculated about who is the buyer/seller on the other side of a trade that I make, and it seems to me it could quite likely be a broker, since the papers often talk about the Singapore market being dominated by house traders. The corollary to this was that since they have access to my overall stock holdings and my stock buying/selling patterns, wouldn't they have an advantage every time I enter into a trade with them?

Thus my preference is to do what I would call position trading, which is a kind of medium-term buy-and-hold strategy. This cuts down the above-mentioned possible brokerage advantages, minimises errors due to poor trading skills which is my key weakness, and allows company fundamentals to take a more prominent role in price determination. And key to this is selection of key themes that are likely to remain strong.

I call this trendspotting. I think it is not a new term for I have seen it used, albeit in other contexts. Daily newspaper reports provide a rich source of content from which key trends can be picked out. US government complains about jobs lost overseas; China sees strong foreign direct investment and is seen to become the workshop of the world. Bingo, the outsourcing theme. Singapore leaders pay endless visits to the Middle East; water companies rush to secure contracts from oil-rich states; banks in Singapore and Malaysia promote Islamic banking. Bingo, the Middle-East theme. The headlines scream these out to us everyday; I will pen down some of those more interesting ones.