New investors are often intimidated because of their lack of knowledge. They see well-dressed men and women in the financial media using jargon they don’t understand, so they believe that investing is a great mystery. They think there are magic formulas to memorize, mystical ratios to learn and complex accounting rules to comprehend and they fear that there’s no way they could master the skills required to be a successful investor. In reality, investors need to understand only two simple concepts to be successful, no matter their skill level. [Here they are!]

July 1st Is Canada's 151st birthday: Here are 151 little-known facts

The next time the stock market has a large decline, examine your emotions. Are you exuberant or despondent? The answer will tell you if you are an investor or merely a speculator.

Investors want to know how much of their portfolio they should be in cash but there is no absolute answer to this question. Some investors and traders will hold no cash when they have a strong opinion on the market while others will always hold some cash (e.g. at least 10%) no matter how strongly they believe in their market outlook. You can decide what percentage of your portfolio you should hold in cash right now by considering the following factors:

For many years I have warned people about the coming risks and changes that the world will experience. Very few people are aware of these risks and even fewer understand them. In this piece, I will make an attempt to summarise what I see coming.

The math is simple. The more a country increases its debt to simply stay afloat, the more like the increasing debt will cause a tightening of credit. The next step is a burst bubble and economic crisis. This is what happened in 1929 and in 2007, and it’s happening now.

Pushing the big problems into the future appears to have been the working strategy for both the Fed and recent Administrations, yet the U.S. dollar and the budget deficit do matter, and the future is at hand. The day of ultimate financial reckoning has arrived, and it is playing out. Words: 1096

Buying and selling based on a moving average of monthly closes can be an effective strategy for managing the risk of severe loss from major bear markets. In essence, •when the monthly close of the index is above the moving average value, you hold the index, •when the index closes below, you move to cash. A chart of the S&P 500 monthly closes since 1995 shows that a 10- or 12-month simple moving average (SMA) strategy would have ensured participation in most of the upside price movement while dramatically reducing losses.

...Volatility has now returned to the stock market after a hibernation of several years...[and such] an explosion of volatility is indicative of a change of trend. The recent signals transmitted by this market have been classic and have been telling us that we have entered the final topping process of this extended and stretched economic cycle.

History tells us we should expect higher stock prices in the next quarter, mid-year, and by the end of 2018. The trillion-dollar question is, “When will this all end?”