Bree

Bree,

I've spent five years trying out most investing styles, and Darvas' book was one of them.

I was pretty intrigued with Darvas' work, but I think it's been challenged by many changes-- decimalization, volume/liquidity, Reg FD, information moving at the speed of Internet, cheaper commissions, and institutional trading. While it's a very straightforward mechanical system, I'm not sure how much relevance it has among all those changes. It might still work. It might not. I didn't stick around to figure it out.

While I enjoyed learning with real money, it's also real work. My most important conclusion was that I didn't want to work that hard, especially when we already have enough money for our needs and no desire to become any richer. (That can suck the motivation right out of building a portfolio.) I've come back around to value investing because it seems to require the least overall effort, analysis, and monitoring. Berkshire Hathaway and an angel investor's club are as "out there" as I'm likely to get, and it's more for education than profit.

Sorry this wasn't more helpful. Methods that have fallen out of favor frequently outperform later, but I stopped the experiment to spend more time surfing...

-- Doug

Ah Cool!

Oh, hey, I figured out the difference between a private message and a visitor message. A visitor message is like a mini board that's under my user name. Cool feature.