Well Java, my theory is, if there's a company I wanna invest in and I need to perform DCF and all sorts of analysis on it to come to a decision as to whether or not I should invest in, I probably will not invest in it. While I'm not a "chartist" or a "technician", the only tools I have are support and resistance (which i think is similar to the mean reversion model, although mean reversion is usually more evident in commodities)

The way I screen for stocks is not based on value or future expected cash flows or any other thing taught in business school. My idea is that given the amount of securities in the market, on can always find a handful at any given moment to invest/ trade in without all that pain. But you can't get free lunch and the hard work comes in the form of constantly monitoring the prices bcause of how sensitive markets are to global events. I think we're gonna see 24/7 trading in our lifetimes very soon (look at the liquidity in premarket hours) and stock trading will reach "perfect competiton", like that of foreign exchange trading very soon.

Having said that however, I always end up checking the balance sheets and income statements of the last 3-5 years just to have that extra confidence. It doest take any more than 5-10 minutes anyway.

By the way, Im working towards my CFA and now I'm beginning to think that it may or may not be that good of an idea spending so much time over three years given how saturated the market is with all these CFAs around...like a CFA bubble...

any advice guys?