Millennials Are Being Taught To Trade Stocks Rather Than Buy And Hold

It used to be that buy and hold was king. Now that stock investing strategy is pretty much dead, if the powers that be have any say in it.

Take a look at sites like GetBucks.com, Kapitall.com, and Invstr.com and you will see what the younger generations are being sold. Those sites are teaching young investors to trade stocks on their phones and trying to get them excited about the thrill and rush of being in the stock market game. You can start with a free account and free virtual dollars in each of them but clearly, the hope is to get you to load up real dollars and trade for real.

The stock market and investing in stocks isn't a game but increasingly the industry wants you to view it as such. The deep discount brokers, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and all the other heavyweight industry titans hope to get you excited about trading stocks. Buying and holding is boring and extremely "hands off". The only way to be "hands on" with your investments is to buy and sell on at least a relatively frequent basis. That what they want you to believe.

Have you watch Cramer lately on CNBC? Now thats the biggest hype guy out there. For the last 3 months or so he has repeatedly stressed that with AAPL you need to buy and hold that stock and NOT trade it. Stressing the "buy and hold" is apparently so different than what you would do with other stocks that he needs to continually make a big deal of it.

In today's society, so many people are addicted to their device screens and this is especially true for 20 to 40 year olds. Instant gratification is what everyone craves and demands. That is why trading stocks is so popular. You get in, you get out, and you see a result right away. EXCITING!

Buy and hold? Thats old school now and not the way its done anymore. Its too bad because in my life I have made most of my money by buying good companies and holding on for a year or more. I take those dividends and put them away for retirement or use them to buy more stock. Buy and hold isn't dead with me but to new investors they might never have a chance to even understand that is even an option.