Stop Whining

I have made a resolution: stop whining about share prices!

Share prices fluctuate, often for no good reason, and this is just life on the stock market. Yesterday the traders got hold of eBay and chucked it around like a tennis ball. The financial media struggle to explain such moves - Reuters was the only one to make an attempt, and a desperate one here. The fact is that share price movements cannot always be explained by recent news. What about if someone who has £100 million of eBay decides to retire and move his portfolio into bonds? What about if some top-down fund manager decides to rotate out of Internet stocks? Or it could just be traders having some fun.

As a very small investor I am riding the waves created by other people. I just buy into fantastic companies at what I think is a good price and hope to sell at a profit one day. I still maintain that eBay was good value at $44. At $38 it is even better value but that still might not be the bottom of this little dip.

If I end up with a large paper loss then that is my fault for not having a specific stop loss policy. It is no good investing in a volatile stock and then whining about its volatility.

eBay will be fine. Even if it isn't I will be fine. There are bigger things that can go wrong than the eBay share price!