[lbo-talk] 10 milliseconds: too slow

[Miles Jackson]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> [from Merrill Lynch chief investment strategist Richard Berntstein]
>
> Some short-term traders are indeed successful.  However, our research  
> has consistently shown that the probability of losing money increases  
> significantly as one shortens one's investment time horizon.  We have  
> examined periods as long as 10 years and as short as 1 day.  Short- 
> term trading is roughly a 50/50 proposition, i.e. success is likely  
> to be luck.
>
> The economic rationale behind our results is simply that fundamentals  
> do not actually change in very short time periods, and that short- 
> term trading is often largely based on meaningless noise.
>
>   
--And he says this like it's a bad thing!  What else would you expect in 
the gambling-saturated, get-quick-rich culture?  (Perhaps gambling in 
its varied forms--not religion--is the most soporific opiate of the 
masses nowadays?)

Miles