The popular prescription “Buy at the sound of cannons, sell at the sound of trumpets” can be misguided advice. Buying on the bad news can be a very costly strategy, especially since bad news has a habit of getting worse. How many people lost substantial amounts of investment capital when they bought on the bad news coming out of the Bank of New England after the stock had already dropped from $40 to $20, or from $20 to $10, or from $10 to $5, or from $5 to $1, only to see it sink to zero and wipe out 100 percent of their investment?
