Pay attention, everything changes at snail speeds.

I was chatting to my six and a half year old daughter last evening about the things that we had when I was her age. And how those "things" are so much different nowadays. We all like music in my family, I have a very old generation iPod and my iPhone also has a whole lot of songs on it, which I play through my docking station. Now when I was her age, we used vinyl LP records to listen to music, that was the obvious one when we discussed music. She said "oh ja, I saw that on TV once". Amazing, and that was cool technology, first invented in 1926, the LP. Prior to that of course was the Gramophone, often you associate the Victor Talking Machine dog listening to the speaker. Remember that iconic logo? "His Masters Voice".

Then came the tape, the Sony Walkman (July 1, 1979 – October 25, 2010), which was relatively short lived, considering that "records" had been around for a long, long time. Then came the compact disc player, first commercial one October 1982. And now there are electronic methods of getting music, the iPod was first launched in late October 2001. It is perhaps fair to say that the iPod is already "old" in the original format.

Where is this leading? Other than trying to show you how quickly technology can change, even whilst you think you are paying attention, it changes quite quickly. And in the future technology is going to be wildly better than it is now. We have gone from the personal computer, the Commodore PET was launched in 1977 as the first PC, we are in an era when we are talking about the post PC era. In less than 35 years. My life time. My daughter also asked me about the internet, I said, that is quite new. The first photo was uploaded to the "internet" in 1992. Nowadays we use the internet for almost everything. There are hundreds and thousands (millions) of peoples livelihoods who are connected to the internet.

The first phone to phone SMS was sent back in 1993. Ringtones were cool a decade ago. The iPhone, which I guess revolutionised smart phones went on sale on the 29th of June 2007. That is 1553 days including today. 221 weeks ago the iPhone was launched. And we are on the lookout for version 5 next week. That is basically one a year. The version two is old already. And so will four be. These slowly (and not so slowly) changing facts were coined mesofacts by one of my favourite online bloggers and twitterati, Samuel Arbesman, I first stumbled across his work in this piece: Warning: Your reality is out of date. Here is his bio: The online home of Samuel Arbesman.

So, get to your point I hear you say. This piece is in part to a response to what I get irritated with, short-termism. The average time of holding stocks across all exchanges has plunged over the last decade and a half. In the sixties typically the average holding period was between 7 to 8 years. By the time the year 2000 rolled in, it had been reduced to just a single year. Average. In 2007 on the FTSE it was less than 8 months.

With High Frequency Trading accounting for an enormous amount of all volumes (according to Barry Ritholtz around 70 percent on the NYSE - No, Average Stock Holding Period Is Not 11 Seconds...), I have seen why Buffett is better than the rest.

A simple method of finding value and then you know what, he actually holds the stocks for a long time, and realises the greatest value through the dividend flow and stock price appreciation. Not by looking for a level, or expecting a stock to break out of a trading range. Quality first, pay attention, you will be rewarded. Berkshire Hathaway (Buffett's company) started buying shares in Coca Cola in 1988. A bit late, bearing in mind that Buffett sold Coke door to door as a youngster to make some pocket money, that is where that comment comes from, a bit late.....

In closing, all I want to say is do not get sucked in by the short term anxieties. Easier said than done, there is a lot of noise around, terms like staring over the precipice, standing on the edge, that sort of thing. Yes, it always seems horrible in the midst of any crisis, but we somehow manage to get through and we keep innovating. Like I pointed out, that is where I want to tie this all together.

Please do send me all of your memories of what used to be big, back when you were a kid, or teenager, or young adult. It would be fun to compare notes. And any mesofacts that you might think are unique to you, get those to me too.