The investment advisory publisher I work for has both a value (buy and hold) and several growth (average 4 month hold time) publications, and both do well and have at least outperformed S&P every year. Their current emerging markets publication is up 55% this year, a lot of which was due to their ability to move a fair amount of holdings into cash about two weeks ago.

Both strategies work. Sure, you can time badly and “miss the best 50 days of trading and lose 10% of your portfolio!” I love how buy-and-hold people throw that argument out all the time, because half of what market timing people do is watch the market to make sure they don’t miss those days. Not to mention the opposite side of that argument: being IN the market for the worst 50 days, is rarely, if ever, brought up!

Personally, I just find growth investing more exciting. Waiting two years for Home Depot to go up 10 points just isn’t very thrilling. Chasing CROX and First Solar up 150% is though. Both strategies are viable, but people defend or insult them like they’re talking about religion.

In other news, the lack of updates has been due to me coming home from work and working with my wife on starting our new small business, for which we hope to sell our first product in two weeks. I’ve been writing some pieces on the process of starting a business like this, but would rather wait until that process is complete before publishing anything.