Strategies

At this mature stage of a cyclical bull market, it’s important to avoid allowing your hubris to go haywire - to believe you’re just so damn good that your next goal should be to “beat an index.” I offer 3 ways to let you keep yourself in check - to avoid losing your ass - as markets eventually revert to a mean.

There is a simple way for any logical person to determine whether a crash is imminent. It isn’t listening to fear mongering, or a commentator trying to grab attention so stop listening to the experts who are blowing out their ……. Start looking around yourself.

Even seasoned U.S. investors can make basic (and wrong) assumptions and generalizations when it comes to investing internationally. Here are a few common traps that investors tend to fall into when they start looking outside their own country’s borders.

Numbers don’t lie. You’re either making money or you’re losing money. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you make incredibly careless errors that could cost you dearly. There’s no better meritocratic environment. So, do you possess the characteristics of what it takes to become a successful trader? Here are 10.

Don’t ever take financial headlines at face value. They seldom tell the whole (or true) story - and you definitely shouldn’t rely solely on insiders to govern your investment decisions. They’re just as unreliable.

One of the most enduring of Wall Street axioms - falling somewhere under "buy low and sell high" but above "greed is good" - is to "sell in May and go away" and, indeed, there appeared to be some truth to the saying. Between 1950 and 2012, the Dow Jones gained an average of 7.6% annually during the November-April period, but only 0.4% during May-October. Does "Sell In May and Go Away" still hold true as a viable investment strategy? Not according to my analysis. Here's why.

Much has been written that it is impossible to time the market - that a buy and hold approach is much more rewarding - but that is simply not the case. This article provides you with the knowledge and a great charting service (free) to do just that.All you need do then is set aside the time and make the effort to apply the disciplines learned.

It seems logical that a scary, destructive terrorist attack, particularly one that implies more attacks to come, would be bearish for stock prices - but has that actually been the case?

It would seem logical to say that peace allows companies to focus on manufacturing goods, providing services, innovation and competition, all of which helps the overall economy but does peace, in fact, have anything to do with determining stock prices?

Macroeconomic news supposedly explains only about one fifth of the movement in stock prices but if there is no accommodating theory, then the presumed causality involved is tenuous at best. Let me explain.