Stock investing

A post on Smell the Cheese group by Amit and I have his permission to reproduce his thoughts here( regarding buy/hold/sell confusion)

I would suggest you something. I hope you wont mind it, but after reading so many replies, I just thought to share my views:

In Stock Market, Don't be afraid of making mistakes. You can not win 100% of time. Take control of your Trading and be focused.
No Trade is completed without a) Entry Price, b) Stop Loss and c) Prospective Target Level with time duration. Focus only on net-net profits. If your Stop Loss hits, Exit immediately from losing stock and concentrate on next prospective profitable trade. This is the only way to make consistent profits in Stock Market: - Be Focused. Incur mentality of Professional Traders.

If you trade with discipline, there may be some occasions when you make consistent losses in a series and there will be trades where you will make series of profits.

A professional Trader is not afraid of making mistakes and taking losses, they just exit from a losing trade as soon as they identify a losing trade while they stick to profitable trades for months even years until they don't find any reasons for exhaustion of the rally or reversal in trends. They just keep shifting their Trailing Stop Losses up for protection from a sudden rise and fall in market (Like Black Monday) While we do exactly opposite :- We stick to our losing trades till the last penny drown and keep on averaging it in hopes of making it a winner. During this, we miss so many winning opportunities to make money, had we have enough capital to enter into a new trade.

I would say: - This is very very difficult to exit a losing trade, but we have to learn this hard lesson if we want to survive and make profits in Stock Market. Always Go for Value, not for the Price. You can still make money by buying a stock at 2000 and selling at 2400 till the rally is sustained.

Answering my doubts about the time & effort required vis a vis the returns, Amit says that there is no need to spend 2-3 hours a day for trading, anyone can work during weekend and then try to take trades. But afterall, its our money, the more cautious we are, the more profitable it is and lesser risky.

Easier said than done for me atleast!