by Chris Becker
From Jack Damn at Stockwits, via Alan Newman, is a fascinating chart illustrating how short-term stock “investing” has become.
Not just from the depths of the GFC, but throughout the whole Great Moderation period (i.e. the near 30-year stock bubble from 1980 to 2007) the average holding period for stocks dropped from 45 months to just over 4 months!
Now we’re back to holding periods akin to just before the Great Crash of 1929. After that, the Greatest Generation got down to letting their investments work for them, only for the Boomers to then turn into Gordon Gekkos.
The question is: are we on the cusp of a return to more conservative investing, as the era of developed world growth sinks to sub 2% potential? Or will this trend continue in a world of algorithmic and HFT trading?