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I think I'm giving this week a miss.  I want to write about Profit Taking and High Frequency Trading and how I think it's basically evil and distorts the markets and leads to disasters like the Flash Crash, but I can't seem to bring together my thoughts in any coherent way.

For that matter, I have to admit that I'm as guilty as anyone of buying stocks that I don't plan to hold onto for years and years.  I do my own profit taking with some frequency, I suppose, just not crazy-fast computer-driven only-own-it-for-a-few-seconds frequency.  I engage in Low Frequency Trading.

It comes down to the fact that I'm pursuing a mix of strategies.  Some stocks I'll hold for a very few months and sell, not when I think it's an especially good time to take some profits out of that particular position, but because something else I want to buy comes to my attention.  I love a bargain.  When I see a new bargain then I'm apt to sell a stock that was once a bargain but has become clearly profitable while I sat on it.

That said, I do have one stock that I plan to sell in the next couple months and I don't know, as of this writing, what stock or stocks I will buy with the proceeds.

I've written before about how I try to take advantage of MIND CTI (MNDO) and its annual dividend to make a nice, annual profit for myself.  It's not exactly the buy and hold strategy that I'm enacting with the few shares of Amazon (AMZN) that I've purchased.

My point, though, is that I know (or I think I know) that I'm going to be selling my shares in MIND CTI in March or April, and that this is a clear exercise in profit taking, albeit infrequent profit taking, so I'm having trouble writing about what exactly my moral position is in all this.

Because it seems to me that the stock market ought to be all about investors enacting ye olde buye and holde strategy.  But that's not really what I do, usually.  No, for me it's more like Flip This Stock.  Buy it.  Let it appreciate.  Sell it.

Sometimes the Let It Appreciate step is just a couple months.  Sometimes it's six months.  Sometimes it's years.

The conclusion I seem to be arriving at is that one is not necessarily better than another.  Different hold times are appropriate for different stocks, and for different investors.  But that means I don't get to complain about the strategies of other investors and institutions.

So.  Nothing insightful here this week.  Sorry.

I am going to be spending some time trying to figure out what to buy next, though.  Last week's rambling about Research In Motion (RIMM) was symptomatic of this.  I may ramble about that particular possibility some more in the future.  More likely I'll explore some other possible investments with you.

Because I know I'll be buying something in the next couple of months.  I just don't yet know what it will be.