If Wazua could add another rank, It would be good to have a Hero rank for you. You have strengthened my hope of hitting the bull's eye with persistent investing.Congratulations.

congratulations in order to you @slowandsteady.. Great encouragement there,, looking forward to fatten my portfolio to 8+ figures in Jesus name, Amen..

You don't get it @mnadii, do you??? He got there by not selling!!! Some fellows just engage zero sum business - and they are the busiest. Sell at 10% profit, buy, sell at 10% loss, buy, sell at 20% loss, buy, sell at 20% loss,.....

Net profit/loss = 0%.

How does Warren Buffet operate? He's on record as saying, "Our preferred holding time [for any stock] is FOREVER!!!".

Always ask yourself "Why did I buy this stock? Are those reasons still valid?". If your answer is yes, keep holding. If it is no (some drastic has happened/changed) you can sell.

Home work:

@mnadii (Others can help). Check at how much the people who bought Equity Bank shares(before listing - or even after listing [two answers here]) bought them at. Now do the math (include bonus & splits) and see how much (if they are still holding the stock) they have multiplied their money by. 10,000/= invested then is worth how much now.

Repeat the above for Apple!!!

Post answers here!!!

@mnandii, your sentiments are appreciated but over the years i have found that if you follow the wisdom of the Sage of Omaha you will not go very wrong in this investing business. I will try and share some of the vital lessons i have learnt over time but for now i will share some of my favorite quotes from Mr. Buffett.
1. In investing, returns decrease as motion increases (Lesson: keep the buying/selling to a minimum. I have bought shares every month and sold only once in 7years)
2. Our favorite holding period is forever (i would say me too)
3. “Your goal as an investor should simply be to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily-understandable business whose earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher five, ten and twenty years from now. Over time, you will find only a few companies that meet these standards – so when you see one that qualifies, you should buy a meaningful amount of stock. You must also resist the temptation to stray from your guidelines: If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio’s market value.” (Lesson: be prepared for the long haul and ignore all predictions of doom)
4. “Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.” (Lesson: there will always be something to be worried about but stay invested anyway)

And finally, as they say "its the time in the market, not timing the market" that will determine if you win or lose in this business of investing. I intentionally left out the greedy when others are feasrful quote because i know thats class one knowledge to the folks on this forum.

@slowsteady, congrats on your portfolio. However my long experience at the NSE has taught me that Buffet's ways do not necessarily work on this market. At the NSE the best advise is to think long term and act short term,this market can shock you with losses and gains. I have played around with Kengen from its IPO buying low selling high to move to top 500 shareholders. The price is now below the IPO price, I would have gained very little by just holding for long term.

I am never a speculator..will never be one.I play my strategy and it works for me! Everybody has got his strategy..at the end of the day we are here to make a living

Good. Different people emply different strategies to analyse the market. In the long run ( 2-3 yrs) you should be vindicated.

I am studying Austrian economics and it has very interesting take on our current situation.

Let me contribute the little I have gathered so far.

The route cause of our 'problems' is the interference in the free market economy by actors such as the state through a central bank.

What a central bank does is to distort the market from an equilibrium position.

You see, the policy that a CB persues may be one of two: a stable price level (hence the constant preoccupation with CPI, for example) OR a stable purchasing power of money.

So when a CB 'sees' that prices are rising or falling beyond a certain threshold it intervenes in the market by, e.g. raising or lowering the interest rate. The goal here is that the price level or the purchasing power of money should remain constant to eternity. The Austrian School finds this fallacious.

In a free market, when prices rise or fall, they do so in response to supply and demand forces which in turn lead to an equilibrium price.

The housing market in the US is a good example. Whenever the prices of houses were falling the FED intervened to keep it from falling. So artificial prices for houses were maintained until at some point the CB becomes overwhelmed and prices fall with or without intervention.

The belief that falling prices are bad is a wrong belief. An entrepreneur will invest if he/she perceives imbalances btw the price of capital goods and the price of the finished product. i.e. If even in a situation where all prices are falling, some categories will fall much faster than others. So if the price of capital goods have fallen faster than the price of the finished item, it follows that the investor will still make money.

A good example is the PC market. Years ago a mainframe computer cost many multiples more than the price of laptop today. Yet the laptop is much faster and more efficient than the mainframe. Also note that the number of computers shipped today are many multiples more than were shipped at any time back in e.g 1980s.

So the price of a computer fell yet the manufactures still manage to make profits in today's market. The lesson here is that falling prices is not necessarily a bad thing warranting intervention by a Central Bank.

In fact, what should happen in a free market is that investors will find more efficient and technologically superior ways to manufacture items at a much reduced cost and still maintain their level of profitability.

In the case of the US, since more houses were being built (hence more supply) the house prices should have been left to fall till an equilibrium price is reached. True, some people in the building industry could have lost jobs and the like, but the end result would have been a more efficient market i.e the workers would have gone to other industries where their labour would have been better utilised.

So, interference in the market causes distortions that lead to malinvestment and hence booms and burst. In another thread a wazuan had challenged me that 'booms and bursts' are merely theories on shaky foundation. I think this should be a better explanation of why they do in fact happen.

For more on the Austrian School of thought visit www.mises.org

Money, Sound and Unsound, Joseph T. Salerno
Pg 37