This is the kind of chart they show you at those all-knowing Daytrader Seminars, pointing glibly at the $48.50-peak and pontificating, "You simply sell out HERE", and then, running their pointer to the trough at $44.55, "You buy back in HERE."
Unfortunately, I don't have their 20/20 hindsight and in any case, I'm not a daytrader but an investor who lives on his dividends, but it was still gut-wrenching to watch BHP, together with other miners, drop 7.76% in just five days. No need to tell you what that is in real money!
The hemorrhaging may stop today as I've just looked up BHP's overnight American Depositary Receipts which are the equivalent of two shares, and their price is up a tiny 0.03% to US$60.45 which, at an exchange rate of 0.6736, equals AUS$89.74, or $44.87 for one share, up by 32 cents against yesterday's Australian closing price of AUS$44.55.
BHP is the world's biggest miner and shares in it will always pay a good dividend in the long run; however, as wise old John Maynard Keynes also remarked, "In the long run we are all dead." You can read about it here:
My best mate Noel dabbled in shares, the ones he could afford on an age-pension: so-called penny-dreadfuls. I would chide him for losing what little money he had on share tips scribbled by some rookie writer in the Daily Telegraph, but his reply always was, "What else is there?"
And, of course, Noel was right because humans are meant to take risks, to venture out to die with their boots on rather than fade away in bed. He also proved Keynes right because in the long run he too was dead, with none of his penny-dreadfuls having turned into dollar dazzlers.
