By Tom Bradley

That’s how one reader felt about my last Globe and Mail column (Focusing Too Much on the Short Term Can Lead to a Short Career). 

I stand by what I wrote about long-term thinking, but in response to that comment and a couple of others, I should clarify one thing.  I am not suggesting that we should be oblivious to opportunities or risks that arise as a result of short-term factors.  Indeed, market gyrations are a boon for investors with a good sense of long-term value. 

Another reader provided some assistance in addressing the short-term/long-term issue.  He quoted Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor, which is the bible for value investors.

"Since common stocks, even of investment grade, are subject to recurrent and wide fluctuations in their prices, the intelligent investor should be interested in the possibilities of profiting from these pendulum swings. There are two possible ways by which he may try to do this: the way of timing and the way of pricing. By timing we mean the endeavor to anticipate action of the stock market - to buy or hold when the future course is deemed to be upward, to sell or refrain from buying when the course is downward. By pricing we mean the endeavor to buy stocks when they are quoted below their fair value and to sell them when they rise above such value. A less ambitious form of pricing is the simple effort to make sure that when you buy you do not pay too much for your stocks. This may suffice for the defensive investor, whose emphasis is on long-pull holding; but as such it represents an essential minimum of attention to market levels - except, perhaps, in dollar-cost averaging plans begun at reasonable price levels."

When in doubt, go to the source.