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The most e-mail I get is whenever I defend buy-and-hold investing. Despite all the evidence in its favor, too many investors dismiss this simple, proven strategy. The complaint I hear most often is that buy-and-hold has been a flop for the past several years.

My defense is that I don’t favor buy-and-hold per se. More accurately, I favor buy-and-buy-and-buy-and-hold. This is much closer to reality for investors as they usually add to their portfolios each month.

Let’s assume an investor put $200 in the S&P 500 at the beginning of each month starting in January 2000. That’s an investment of $15,000 (75 X $200). Today, that portfolio would be worth about $18,100 even though the market is down about 2% over that same time.

More good news for the Buy List today. We’ve finally pulled ahead of the S&P 500 for the year. Harley-Davidson (HDI) is our next stock to report earnings. The announcement is scheduled for Wednesday. The current estimate is for 86 cents a share. Reuters notes that some investors are nervous before the announcement. I’m not one of them. Harley is cheap at this price.

Also, the Oil ETF (USO) will debut on the Amex Monday. Hopefully, there will be a silver one soon.

Posted by edelfenbein at April 7, 2006 2:52 PM