Long Term Investing Vs Short Term Trading

Long Term Investing Vs Short Term Trading

Jun.10, 2010

Investing into stocks over the long term and trading stocks are two conflicting points of view. So, which one is better? Well this really depends; each strategy has its advantages and disadvantages.

Long term investing is simply the process of buying strong companies and holding onto them for the long term. Because the companies are fundamentally strong they are unlikely to go out of business any time soon and in fact they are very likely to increase in price as time goes by.

Trading stocks in the short term is actually a completely different strategy. Instead of holding onto stocks for the long term short term traders tend to use things such as chart patterns and technical indicators to attempt to catch the short term movements of stocks and hopefully make a larger profit then if they were to simply buy and hold the stock.

Which strategy is best? There are defiantly advantages and disadvantages to each method. The best strategy for you really depends on you and where you are at.

Trading stocks in the short term does have a lot more potential then buying and holding. If you can make short term gains relatively consistent over the long term then you can do pretty well for yourself. However it does take a lot of work and there are no guarantees that you will make any money. It is like starting a business most people will fail their first time around, but those who can keep getting back up and learning from their mistakes will likely do well eventually.

If you are willing to put all of the time and energy into short term trading the rewards can be pretty nice.
However if you just want something that is considered to be safe yet does have some potential then you can take a look at long term investing. The main advantages of long term investing are that it is passive and it is a relatively secure way of making a decent return over the span of a couple decades.

Basically it comes down to this, if you want to earn a relatively safe return passively then investing in the stock market can be a great idea. If however you want to attempt to increase your returns and put some extra time into it then trading stock might be better suited for you.