Investing in REITs: Real Estate Investment Trusts, 4th Edition

The Investor's Dilemma: Buy-and-Hold versus Trading

One school of thought is that the key to investment success is to purchase shares of stock in the largest, most solid companies, or to buy mutual funds (actively or passively managed), and to hold those stocks or funds indefinitely. The only time to sell, say the buy-and-hold advocates, is when you need capital for other uses. Advocates of buy-and-hold have been bruised by the volatile stock markets of the recent past, including two significant recessions in the past 10 years, but they continue to believe that it's impossible to consistently and accurately time the markets, that economies will expand over time, and that profits of well-run public companies will grow—rewarding the patient and ...