Look Beyond the Headlines
It's news you can't use.
Like a pack of dogs feasting on fresh meat, stock-market traders pounce on the latest financial news. A company announces disappointing earnings and its shares plunge 20%. The Commerce Department releases upbeat economic data and traders send stocks soaring.
Tempted to join the game? Don't do it. Information may be the lifeblood of the market. But that doesn't mean it's easy to make money off the news.
Late Again
When the latest headlines flash across computer and television screens around the world, shares rapidly rise or fall to reflect the new information. Along the way, a few lucky souls make a few bucks.
But in all likelihood, the winners are professional traders. As an ordinary investor banging your order into a brokerage-company Web site, you will almost always be a few steps behind, getting in your trade after the big money has already been made.
"To win, you don't just have to be fast," says Meir Statman , a finance professor at Santa Clara University in California. "You have to be faster than the other guy. As an individual investor, you're never going to be the fastest. So why join the race?"
If you try to make money trading stocks, you will also be hamstrung by costs. Sure, a discount broker might charge just $10 or $20 in commissions to buy and sell shares.
But that cost is often modest compared to the real financial hit, which is the bid-ask spread, the difference between the "ask" price at which you can currently buy and the lower "bid" price at which you can sell. This spread can take a huge chunk out of your returns, especially if you dabble in smaller-company stocks.
Paying Up
Don't like the idea of missing the initial pop in share price? It gets worse. If you trade on the news, you may end up overpaying for shares.
Consider a study by finance professors Brad Barber and Terrance Odean. They analyzed stocks that were in the news and garnering a heap of attention. Their finding: Stocks bought heavily by individual investors underperformed the stocks sold by these amateurs by an average 0.68 percentage point over the next month, equal to more than eight percentage points a year.
"If you buy stocks in the news, you're likely to be buying when a lot of other amateur investors are buying," says Prof. Odean, who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley. "All that buying can drive the price up temporarily, which means you're going to get lower returns in the future."
Wrong Number
Even if you are slow to get into a stock, you could clock healthy gains if the latest news signals the start of some new trend. But it is dangerous to read too much into economic and financial data, in part because the numbers are often revised.
Take corporate earnings. As the accounting scandals that accompanied the 2000-2002 bear market made clear, it's possible for companies -- by legitimate or illegitimate means -- to make earnings appear rosier than they really are. Companies, however, can play this game for only so long. Eventually, the truth comes out -- and hoodwinked investors often get hosed.
And, no, it isn't safe to assume that companies always aim to make earnings appear more robust. A new chief executive might deliberately depress profits at the start of his or her tenure by, say, writing down inventories or ill-conceived acquisitions.
With the bad news out of the way, the new chief executive would then have a good shot at generating a stream of steadily improving earnings. The danger: You get unnerved by the bad news, dump your shares and miss out on handsome gains.
Guessing Games
Rather than reacting to the news, you could try to make money by anticipating it. But you immediately run into two problems.
First, true "news" is, by definition, unpredictable. Second, even if you know what's going to happen, that alone isn't enough to make money. Instead, you also need to forecast the market's reaction -- and that can be surprisingly tricky.
For me, this lesson was driven home in early 1991, at the start of the first Gulf War. As traders waited for bombs to drop on Baghdad, the assumption was that share prices would plunge when hostilities began. But when the initial U.S. assault proved more successful than folks imagined, shares skyrocketed and the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index went on to post a whopping 30.5% gain for the year.
The market's reaction can be odd, even in the face of totally unexpected news. After the devastating tsunami struck on Dec. 26, 2004, I expected Asian stock markets to be hit with an onslaught of selling. But when those markets opened for trading the following day, most of them posted only modest declines.
Missing the Story
Professional traders often talk about the importance of being disciplined. Most of us, however, sure don't fit that description.
In fact, we make a slew of mental mistakes, including selling our winners too quickly, hanging onto our losers too long and favoring anecdotal evidence over statistical proof. We also read too much into short-term market performance, either assuming that rising markets will keep on rising or convincing ourselves that highflying markets are set to crash.
Worst of all, we lose sight of the big picture. In my two decades as a financial journalist, there has been an endless series of financial crises, including the junk-bond collapse of 1989 and 1990, the European currency crisis of September 1992 and the "Asian contagion" financial debacle of 1997. In each case, the crisis supposedly marked a financial watershed. Yet today, I can barely recall the details.
The lesson: If you get too caught up in the news, there is a risk you will miss out on the bigger story. So what's the bigger story? Just look at one of those charts showing the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbing over time. There's good money to be made in stocks -- as long as you ignore the scary headlines and hang on for the long haul.
别让消息遮住双眼
这是一些对你毫无用处的消息。
就像一群狗争相扑上一块美味鲜肉、尽情享用一样，股市交易员们总是对最新的财经消息趋之若鹜。一家公司公布了令人失望的业绩报告，其股价立即应声下挫；美国商务部(Commerce Department)公布了积极的经济数据，交易员们又会推动股市上扬。
忍不住也要加入他们的行列吗？千万不要。消息是股市的生命线，但并不意味著有了消息就能轻松赚钱。
又晚来一步
当最新的重大消息在世界各处的电脑和电视机屏幕上闪烁的时候，相关股价会立即随著消息的传播或涨或跌，在这个过程中，只有少数幸运儿能小赚一笔。
赢家往往都是那些专业的交易员。作为一个只是偶尔通过经纪公司网站进行交易的普通投资者，你永远会比他们晚一步，在他们赚走了大头之后，你才姗姗来迟、下单交易。
加州圣克拉拉大学(Santa Clara University)金融学教授斯塔特曼(Meir Statman)说：“要想从中赢利，不仅要快，而且还要比其他人都快。作为一个散户投资者，你永远不可能是那个最快的人，又何苦来参加这场竞赛呢？”
如果你试图通过交易股票赚钱，交易成本就可能让你吃不消。当然，一家折扣经纪商交易股票的佣金可能只要10美元或20美元。
但这部分成本与真正的股票交易损失相比往往算是少的，如果你现在买进股票的价格高于以后你卖出的价格，它们之间的差价带来的损失会让你的收益大打折扣，特别是当你被某些小型股套牢的时候。
投资成本增加
不想错过股价最初上涨的机会吗？但情形可能会因此变得更糟。如果只依据获得的消息进行股票交易，你最终可能会为此付出更高的代价。
金融学教授巴伯(Brad Barber)和奥迪恩(Terrance Odean)的一项研究值得我们思考。他们在分析了那些曾爆出重大消息并引起人们广泛关注的股票后发现，散户投资者大量买进的股票在接下来的一个月比他们所卖出的股票收益率平均低0.68个百分点，相当于一年低8个百分点以上。
“如果你是根据一些消息来决定买进股票，那么在你买进股票的同时，可能还有大量像你这样的业余投资者也在进行买进，”奥迪恩说，“所有这些买盘可能会暂时推高股价，而这意味著你未来获得的回报将会减少。”奥迪恩在加州大学伯克利分校(University of California at Berkeley)任教。
错误的数据
即使你比那些专业投资者晚了一步，但如果这些最新的消息预示著一轮新行情的开始，你一样能获得丰厚的回报。但是不要太过牵强地去解读经济数据和财务数据，因为这些数据常常会被修正。
以公司收益为例，从伴随著2000-2002年熊市的一系列会计丑闻就能清楚地反映出这一点，无论是采用合法的还是非法的手段，各公司总能把自己的收益状况粉饰得比实际情况更好。不过这样的把戏隐瞒不了多久，当终于有一天东窗事发的时候，上当受骗的投资者往往会输得一败涂地。
当然，也不能就此假设所有的公司总想让自己的收益状况更好看。当公司迎来一位新的首席执行长时，他或她在任期开始的时候可能会想方设法故意压低利润，比如，冲销库存或是失败的并购。
在这些不利消息过后，新任首席执行长就会频传捷报，公司收益稳步提升。这其中隐含的风险是：不利消息可能会让你惊慌失措，匆匆卖出股票，从而失去了盈利的大好时机。
消息预测
不要让消息牵著你的鼻子走，你可以尝试著通过预测消息来赚钱。不过，立刻会有以下两个问题出现在你面前。
首先，真的“消息”从其定义上讲是不可预知的；其次，即使你未卜先知，单靠这一点也还不足以赚到钱。实际上，你还需要预测市场的反应，其难度可能会出乎你的想像。
我自己在1991年初就深刻体会到了这一点。当时交易员们都在等待炸弹投向巴格达的那一刻，人们普遍预测战争一旦打响，股价将会一落千丈。然而，当美国首轮袭击的效果较多数人预期的更为成功时，股市大幅猛涨，当年标准普尔500指数累计上涨了30.5%之多。
市场对消息的反应态度有时让人捉摸不透，即使是面对一些完全出人意料的消息也是这样。在2004年12月26日南亚地区发生了严重的海啸灾难后，我曾预计亚洲股市可能会面临沉重抛盘的冲击，然而在灾难过后第二天这些市场开盘时，多数股市也只是微幅下挫。
错过大消息
专业交易员们常常谈论自律的重要性，不过我们多数人都很难符合这一要求。
实际上，我们会犯很多决策错误，包括过早卖出赚钱的股票、持有亏本的股票时间太长、更愿意轻信传言而不是实实在在的数据等等。我们还会过于牵强地去诠释市场的短期走势，不是假定牛市会持续下去，就是要说服自己牛市很快就要结束。
最糟糕的是，我们忽视了更广泛的东西。在我作为财经记者的20年职业生涯中，各种各样的金融危机层出不穷，包括1989年和1990年垃圾债券危机、1992年9月的欧洲货币危机、以及1997年的亚洲金融危机，每一次危机理应都是一个分水岭。然而今天，我几乎都想不起来当时的具体细节。
教训是：不要过于沉迷在消息中，这会使你错过更重要的信息，那么什么是更重要的信息呢？只需看看道琼斯工业股票平均价格指数多年来上涨的走势图就会发现，股市还是大有钱赚的，只要你不去理会那些耸人听闻的消息，专心致志地放眼长期走势，那就万事大吉了。
