Here’s one: the country is becoming more divided in opinion as to how we should be governed, and has been since the '50s. It’s a trend. It didn’t happen all at once; it happened gradually over time.
You can see it in the index-number’d sets of opinion polls demonstrating how people feel about the government, what’s considered fair, how resources are allocated. We’ve been leaking this way for a long time. Will we keep going? Growing further apart as a nation? The trend would say so.
Wanna do the same analysis with stocks? Well, trend analysis works great, historically, in stock-picking. For a while. If you’d looked at the trend with Sears for whatever metric you want…foot traffic, revenues, mind share…you’d have thought that, by today, Sears would be Amazon instead of bankrupt. The trend was totally its friend in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s. And then bad things happened.
So trends are kinda your friend. Until they’re not. Like Loki, sorta.
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Finance: What is a secular trend?13 Views
finance a la shmoop what is a secular trend well people don't read the
newspaper on paper anymore people die older Americans smoke less and yeah [Man reading newspaper]
maybe that's related to the dying older thing Americans text while going to the
bathroom a whole lot more it's more than they did 20 years ago [Man with phone in bathroom]
these are all secular trends meaning people will likely text even more while
they're going to the bathroom in the future [Man using smartphone]
all right well things that are happening quote forever unquote I eat not just in
a short-term cycle like an economic cycle like the decline of the economy's [Economic cycle appears]
growth is cyclical not secular and unless you believe we're gonna be nuked
by North Korea then oh yeah probably decline is secular but assuming the no [Missile explodes]
nuke solution the economy grows few percent a year then dips for a percent
in roughly seven or eight year cycles its approximated by the stock market
cycle in more or less why does all this matter cyclical versus secular well with
your stock market investor hat on a cyclical bet it's kind of like a white [Man puts stock market cap on]
mark on a bike tire it's gonna roll up up up and then down down down in a cycle
such that it won't doesn't really go anywhere over time like the paper and
pulp industry it kind of just stays flat but you can double your money triple [Cash piles appear]
your money if you buy it right at the bottom of the cycle and then sell it
right at the top of it right that's a cyclical bet and you can think airlines
well over time yeah they too don't really get all that more valuable but if [Aircraft lands on runway]
you buy them right like just when the New York Times is declaring that
whatever West Airlines is certain to now go bankrupt and then sell them when the
New York Times declares that whatever West Airlines is certain to be the next [Man reading newspaper]
Google yeah you'll have quote ridden the cycle unquote nicely there's a good coin
to be made from here to here but a secular trend is different like one
thesis might be while the world's getting hotter so people will want to [Man discussing secular trend]
drink more liquid that's a bullish secular trend for Coke and Pepsi or you
might notice that the internet along with Skype or Google Hangouts has made
where you live not nearly
as important as it used to be so there's a secular trend to live wherever [New York Times Square appears]
you want and that might mean a mass exodus away from the high tax expensive
to live in blue states to the cheaper red states secular long-term non
cyclical and yeah just to watch out for those nukes [Nuke with north korean flag on it appears in the sky]