buy and hold investing can be tough ... , page-3

Buy and hold is dead especially in the small cap end. Look at the XSO , the index of the smaller companies in the All Ords. It's around 2200 now. It hit 2157 back in 1999. So overall small caps have gone nowhere between these two points in time, probably gone backwards if you account for inflation. And dividends outside the top 200 are almost non existent. You have to be a market timer to make money out of small caps not a buy and hold investor. Buy in the low cycle and then sell to the greater fool as the cycle moves back up. But overall , the sum of all buy and hold investors gains and losses in small caps has been nearly nothing for the last 13 years. Some will have done better, some will have done worse, but overall it all nets out to nearly nothing. Probably better off in bonds, or the asx200, than buying and holding small caps for the long term. Risk is lower. Unless you're a trader/speculator.