What is the difference between short term & long term strategies?

[love-to-bike]

OK - on one level it sounds pretty simple - if I'm trying to time the market by doing research on a daily basis and making changes based on that, that's short term. If I'm looking out to retirement in 20 years and socking money away without many changes, that's gotta be long term.

Where I have a question is what is considered looking out a few months? Basically I won't be able to perform transfers on a daily or weekly basis because of travel - I'd much rather deal with things out 1-3 months or so. Is that considered short term? And what indicators/factors go into that type of investments (big question, I know!)?

[Spaf]

Short term would include folks that trade funds, long term would include buy and holders.

Day traders don't hold positions over night.
Swing traders hold positions for days or weeks.
Position traders hold for weeks, months or a year.

The most used indicators would include:
Moving Averages.
Stochastic oscillators.
Relative strength indicators.

Generally one finds a few they like rather than risking paralysis by analysis by trying to follow too many indicators.

[atcsat64]

Basically I won't be able to perform transfers on a daily or weekly basis because of travel - I'd much rather deal with things out 1-3 months or so.

Bike, keep this number handy - save it to your cell phone. The TSP Thriftline: 1-TSP-YOU-FRST (1-877-968-3778)

You can perform transfers on the road. It takes a little bit longer than IFT's online, but can save/make some money for you.

[James48843]

Personally, I can't see far enough ahead to call myself a long-term strategy person. I'm simply short term.

I know that over the LONG haul, stocks should be higher than they are today. I also know that it doesn't take a whole lot to loose a lot over a very short period of time. I remember the crash of 87 pretty vividly, and at least now there are circuit breakers in place that should prevent those 10% or more crashes in a single day.

So I am more like a short term watcher- knowing to keep a finger on the trigger if it looks like a REAL pullback is going to start. I thought I was pretty good at spotting those, the May drop this year only caught me in the market for a couple days before I moved out.

The July drop, on the other hand nailed me. I thought I saw a nice little 3 percent pullback, so I moved back in. Then I got hit with the "rest of the story", and fell a lot more.

Live and learn.

The good news is that the last month and a half have been pretty positive, and right now I don't see any major pull back in store. Instead, I figure will have some pretty positive action over the next few weeks as we make new highs.

SO short term to me is this week, next week, and maybe, the week after. That is all I can see on the scope now.

In to win.

[Birchtree]

I'm a long term player. I'm currently focusing my attention as far out as 2010 when all the major cycles are due to nest - October. I'm also focused on this December when the next 9 month cycle will come in - I really don't think it will mean much because the 4 year cycle is stll in an upward move. The problem with cycles though is that they often arrive early and sometimes late - but hey it's not a perfect world.