Every day I see in the financial section of newspapers how to forecast what the market will do in 6 months, 12 months, several years. “Ten stocks that will double in the next 6 months.” Right! I have trouble trying to forecast what it will do tomorrow. Do not trust any who claims he knows what the future will be for the market.

Of course, your broker will send you gobs of slick material about various companies that predict they will double or triple in the next 12 months. On the New York Stock Exchange there will be about one half of one per cent (0.5%) of companies that will double this year. Are you smart enough to pick those winners? I’m not and I am considered a professional trader. And I am sure your broker isn’t either. He just wants to make a commission and is probably promoting a stock his brokerage company wants to push.

Every investor wants to know the future and will send money to some “expert” who will send him news about a company that only (?) he knows. And pigs can fly. One thing about the market. It is almost impossible to keep a secret and everyone knows everything about other companies. As soon as some “analyst” finds a cogent fact that can influence a stock price he will share that “secret” with a few close friends. Within minutes the “secret” is known by hundreds of thousands and is immediately reflected in the price of the stock.

If you do get sucked into one of these money traps by some smooth-talking salesman or newspaper verbiage I strongly suggest you immediately plan your exit strategy. Without an exit plan you can easily lose a large amount of your “investment”. This is not an investment; it is a gamble and should be treated as such. The first thought of any professional trader is ‘if I am wrong how much am I willing to lose’? Maybe 2%, 5%, certainly no more than 10%. Pros understand that small losses are OK, but never take a big loss.

From 1982 to 2000 it seemed everyone was a financial genius. How many of those folks kept those big winnings from 2000? Almost none. Most lost 40% to 60% of their money. Brokers said, “Hang in there. You are in for the long haul”. Unfortunately he did not tell you that Modern Portfolio Theory is based on a 40 year time line.

Yes, but understand you don’t need to predict anything. Don’t forecast. What you can easily learn is follow the major trend. You bought in 1982 and you sold out in 2000. The trend can be found in many ways with the simplest being posted every day in Investors Business Daily newspaper under the IBD Mutual Fund Index. When the Index price is above the 200-day moving average you own equities and when it is below you are in cash or bonds. Nothing complicated,

Don’t try to forecast the market. Let the market trend tell you.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

How often have you come across an advertisement or e-mail proclaiming to "teach" you the stock trading secrets that Wall Street Insiders don’t want you to know? Usually included in the descriptions of these trading products are claims such as "Make 10K monthly in minutes per day", or "Learn the secrets of Professional Stock Brokers", etc. etc. So what are these "secrets" that they are SELLING?

And if the Wall Street Insiders and the Professional Stock Brokers didn’t want to reveal these trading secrets with you, then how come the companies or individuals selling you these products are so quick to give up these "Never before revealed" techniques?

Is it because they don’t work, or are their products just the basic rules of trading rewritten (once again) in a new and thought provoking way? Or, if you believe everything you read, is it really some highly classified and secret method for trading stocks that is being SOLD here?

Stock Trading Secrets Revealed

In its most simplified form, the real trading secrets of the institutions and professional traders fit into at least one of the areas below…

1) A well developed trading system that has proven itself to profitably work over and over again in real-life trading

2) Knowing which trading strategies work best in which markets

3) The role of the Market Makers and how they use their influence to control the market and how you can use this to your advantage

4) What trading indicators are actually reliable

5) Which trading patterns are worth using, and when

6) Proper Money Management techniques, Money Management, and Money Management (note the emphasis here)

7) How to take advantage of margin

So, contrary to what they want you to believe, this is what they are selling you. I’m not saying that all of these trading products out there promoting unknown trading secrets are not worth the money, but quite the opposite. If they can provide you with truthful advice about any of the above areas, AND this advice is not easily accessible or publicized, then their product may greatly benefit your trading results.

But, if they are simply selling you generalized trading information that you can learn from any basic trading book, perhaps your money is better spent elsewhere. Buyer beware.

Frank Soler is a successful trader and Registered Investment Advisor. His company, Soler Investments, provides trading advisory services for stock traders and currency traders. Visit SolerInvestments.com today to find out how he can help you become a successful trader.

Copyright @ 2005 Soler Investments All Rights Reserved. Reprint of this article is allowed as long as due credit is given to the author and links are left intact.

The following are a list of nine things you want to avoid at all costs. Anyone of them can literally destroy your financial dreams and goals!

1. Trading with money you can’t afford to lose.

One of the greatest obstacles to successful trading is using money that you really can’t afford to lose. Examples of this would be money that is supposed to be used to pay the mortgage, bills or your child’s college tuition. This is sometimes referred to as “trading with scared money” and there is a very good reason for that. Ultimately what happens is that when someone knows in the back of their mind that they are risking the rent money, they trade out of fear and emotion versus logic and no emotion.

If you are in this situation I highly recommend that you stop trading until you earn enough to put into an account that you truly can afford to lose without causing major financial setbacks. You can start with as little as $2000 and trade stocks under $30.

2. The need to be “certain”.

We all have the need to make sure that the trade we want to make is going to be a good one. Therefore we look for signs that will give us a confirmation to enter. This can come in several forms, for example… Tuning into CNBC or the Wall Street Journal to give us news that our stock is on the move or waiting for a couple of extra days to make sure that the stock is really flying and just not on a false breakout. Other traders will get opinions from friends, family or broker. Others will wait for ten technical indicators to line up and give the “green light”.

All of these are okay to a point, however the big mistake to avoid is taking so much time that you let the trade take off without you. Interestingly, what ends up happening as a result of waiting too long is that you actually increase your risk. This is because as a stock moves higher and higher there are fewer buyers left in the market and it can come tumbling down until more buyers step in. It is like a game of musical chairs; eventually someone gets caught without a chair.

Traders who wait and wait and wait to make extra sure are usually the ones buying the top tick just before the stocks sells off. They then beat themselves up thinking they picked the wrong stock. Odds are it had nothing to do with their selection, just bad timing.

The thing to keep in mind is that there can be no absolute certainty in any given trade. All we ever can do is take a very educated risk along with a leap of faith!

3. Spending profits before you make them.

Nothing is more exciting then getting into a trade that blasts off and puts you into a highly profitable situation. This can cause major problems however, because this type of trade puts you in a highly euphoric state and leads to daydreaming about the huge profits still to come. You say “Wow I’m already up 15% in two days; I’ll be up 50% in a week and probably double my money in no time!” Then the next thing that happens is you are deciding on the great new car you are going to buy or perhaps telling your boss that he can stick it… Well you get the idea!

The real problem occurs as you get caught up in the daydream and expectations. This causes you to not be prepared to get out as the market sells off and eats up your profits because you have convinced yourself of the eventual outcome and will deny the reality of the situation.

The simple remedy for this is to know where and how you will take profits once you enter the trade. Also, realize that the market will only go up as long as it wants and not how high you think it should go.

4. Forming an opinion.

I’m here to tell you that the market does not give a damn about you or your opinions. Even if they are based on painstaking research or from a “Wall Street Guru”, it doesn’t matter!

Maybe your opinion on market direction for the long term is correct, but it doesn’t mean that in the short term things can’t move against you. Remember that there are tens of thousands of traders out there who also have an opinion. It is all these different opinions that can cause great fluctuations in price on any given day or week regardless of your outlook

5. Three 4-letter words that will kill you! HOPE—WISH—PRAY

If you ever find yourself doing one or more of the above while in a trade then you are in big trouble! As I have already said, the market doesn’t give a damn. All the hoping, wishing and praying in the world is not going to turn a losing trade into a winning one.

When you are wrong just use a simple 4-letter word to correct the situation-SELL!

6. Not sticking to your plan

A big source of trouble arises when a trader starts to deviate from their strategy. Maybe for a week they will trade according to one set of rules and the next use something entirely different.

This flying by the seat of the pants always ends up backfiring. This is because the trader can never be certain what is working and what is not.

You must never deviate from your methodology once you start. As long as it is a good one statistically there is absolutely no reason to change it. The way to make money from it is to trade it over and over again to exploit the edge it gives you.

One thing to also be aware of is that a trader is most vulnerable to switching approaches after a few loses. So, pay special attention at these times.

7. Not knowing how to get out of a losing trade.

It’s amazing how many people I have talked to who don’t have any clear escape plan for getting out of a bad trade. Once again they hope, pray wish and rationalize their position. As I keep saying the market does not care what you think. It does what it does and when you are wrong you are wrong!

The easiest way to keep a bad trade from going really bad is to determine before you get in, where you will get out. You can use a dollar amount or at some target point such as the low of the previous 15-minute bar.

***Make sure you don’t get the “stunned deer in the headlights syndrome”. This is where you see the stock fall to your stop loss point, but you are unable to take action. Maybe this is due to fear or disbelief that you are wrong, but unless you get out ASAP you could end up I major financial trouble!

8. Having an ego.

I have seen a number of individuals enter the trading game that were extremely successful in other business ventures. Because of this they had a fairly big ego and thought they couldn’t fail. Their egos became their downfall because they couldn’t except that they were wrong and refused to bail out of bad trades.

Once again, whoever or wherever you came from does not concern the markets. All the charm, powers of persuasion, number of diplomas on the wall or business savvy will not budge the market when you are wrong.

9. Falling in love with a stock or trade.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Back in the spring of 1999 EFAX was a really hot stock. I waited to buy it on a dip and did so at $19/share. It started to move up strongly and life was great!

After a while though, it started to come back to my entry point and then below it. Here’s the problem. For some reason I really liked EFAX and sort of became attached to it. Ultimately I couldn’t let go of it even though I knew I should. I justified and rationalized why my dear friend should bounce back, but it never did. I finally had to break off my love affair when the stock hit $9. (Ouch!)

The moral of this story is never fall in love, let alone get married to any stock. It can cost you dearly!

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of the principles in this article. Whether you are a position trader, swing trader or day trader, these principles can help you avoid some costly and painful financial mistakes. As they say, smart people learn from their mistakes and brilliant people learn from the mistakes of others.

Dr. Jeffrey Wilde, a trading veteran with 16 years of experience is a trading coach to over 3500 traders in 63 countries. His new blog http://www.askjeffwilde.com offers free trading articles, tips and advice. He also teaches a variety of courses found at http://www.win-at-trading.com and http://www.fastforexprofits.com

There can’t be many traders who haven’t at least considered the idea of telling the boss what they think of him, throwing it all in and going off to trade the stock market for a living. It’s a big risk financially, and that uncertainty is what stops most from jumping ship. Is it really possible to trade for a living?

The Dream

You know how it is, you’re sitting in a traffic jam at some unearthly hour of a particularly wet and miserable morning, on the way to the same office you have sat in for too long to remember, and you’re thinking - there must be a better way – life shouldn’t have to be like this.

Your mind starts to wander and you find yourself thinking back to that stock you bought only a week ago, and how it skyrocketed giving you enough profit to takes the kids to Disneyland in the summer, and you begin to consider if you couldn’t make a fulltime living at this trading game. The advantages are certainly tempting; no more pointless meetings with the manager, hours to suit, holidays whenever you feel like it, and with your home-office - no more traffic jams.

Heck, come to that you could even make home anywhere you want it to be! By the time the traffic starts moving again. you’re busily calculating how much cash you could make if all your trades went like that last one - you’re almost ready to write your notice letter there and then!

The Bad News

Time for a reality check. Certainly all of the above benefits are there to be enjoyed, but it’s a huge step from full time employee to full time trader. Are you really ready to give up that monthly pay-check just yet? Can you really cope not knowing how much money you’re going to make month to month? Are you prepared for the months when you actually lose money instead of make it? There are many things to consider before taking the leap of faith.

Considerations

Before you even think about trading for a living you have to know how much money you need to live on, that is, how much cash do you need to generate every month in order to survive. As a financially minded person you already have good home accounts, or are at the very least vaguely aware of where the money goes. So take the annual figure (monthly is no good, you need to account for annual recurring items like insurance premiums, car servicing, and vacations), add 50% and divide by 12. Why add 50%? Because there will always be unexpected expenses, and as traders we are always prepared to expect the unexpected.

Now you know how much money you need each month, you can look at your savings and work out how much buffer money you have, that is, how long you could survive without earning anything at all. You can’t expect to be an instantly profitable trader, and even the best and most experienced have periods of drawdown, so you need to be ready for the worst. If you can’t live for at least six months from your savings then you are probably under capitalised and are not ready to give up that pay-check just yet.

An important but often overlooked aspect of under capitalisation is the effect it will have on your trading; if you are trading because you need the money, then you are trading scared and you’re almost certainly going to lose. You cannot distance yourself from the money-aspect of the trade if you are relying on the money.

Living expenses are only one part of the financial equation. Next you must consider how much trading capital you need. This is the money actually facilitate trading, in other words your account balance for trading margin, and the money you will be spending on data feeds, software, and internet access. You must account for this separately, you cannot start eating into your daily living expenses money just because you took a bad trade and need some more margin.

The amount of trading capital you require will depend very much on your trading style. To day trade the US Stock Markets for example, you must have at least $25,000 in your account, so budget for $30,000 to allow for positions moving against you (if you fall below the $25k minimum even briefly, your account can be frozen for up to three months). If you are holding positions overnight you may manage with a lower balance but bear in mind your buying power and consequently returns will be reduced.

If all this is starting to sound expensive, well it is. There’s no two ways about it, you simply cannot survive long term as a trader if you are under funded.

This article will be concluded in part two.

About The Author

Geoff Turnbull is a full time day trader, and a contributor to http://www.stock-trading-world.com

When you become interested in a stock or mutual fund you can call your broker and he will send you reports on how the company is doing, what their management is like and what might be the projected earnings for the company and how the industry is doing. Great information.

You will apply yourself to this mound of papers to determine if you want to buy the equity. You might also send for more reports from independent analysts such as Morningstar. You will become buried in papers. That is what the brokerage company wants. The reason is very simple. If you buy the stock after doing all that research and it goes down instead of up they are not responsible for your stupidity. Of course, if it goes up they can take credit for providing all that great information.

Now let’s think for a minute. You received all that information that was already printed so it could be sent to you. It makes me ask when was that printed? How old is the information? If I can get all this stuff about the company it means that anyone can. What it boils down to is the information is just that - information and none of it will tell you that the stock will go up further because the whole world knows.

These brochures are made to help you BUY not SELL. In my years of experience I call them a work of fiction. No brokerage company is going to issue a bad report about a company at least until it is ready for bankruptcy and by then your investment dollars have disappeared.

I know your next question. If I can’t rely on those reports how am I going to buy anything? There is a better way. You will want to see the price action of the stock or mutual fund. All stocks undulate as they go up or down and you want to know the major trend.

On the Internet you can go to a web site www.bigcharts.com and type in the symbol of the stock or fund and request a weekly chart going back for about to 5 years. What you are interested in is what is it doing during the past 6 months to one year. If the trend is up it is a buy and if the trend is down or sideways don’t buy it or if you own it sell. See how easy that is. Brokers and financial planners won’t like it because it takes all the mystery out of buying stock and they don’t want you to know this simple procedure.

Analyst reports give you lots of useless information, but will not tell if the stock will go up after you buy it. If it isn’t going up don’t buy it.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Money management starts with protecting your capital, realizing profits and cutting losses. As I have stated in the past, without cash, you can’t invest. Cash is king and learning to manage your money is the most important aspect to investing in stocks. The game is won by lowering your risk by properly turning the numbers in your favor. Cutting losses is the best insurance to keeping your cash.

Emotions fuel the decisions of many investors; leading the pack is hope, fear and greed. In order to control these emotions, proper money management skills must be developed through a defined set of rules. How do you know if an investment is working and moving in the right direction? If it shows a profit, you are correct, if it shows a loss, something is wrong and it may be time to protect your capital.

Most investors develop the emotion of hope after a stock has declined from the initial purchase price. They hope that it will rebound and make promises to themselves that they will sell at breakeven. If and when the stock rebounds, they break the promise and become greedy and decide to hold on for a profit instead of selling. Typically, the stock will start to decline and the investor will start to accumulate losses. Investors are full of pride and will not admit that their judgment is wrong, so instead, they decide to hold on and accumulate additional losses.

When a stock is purchased and starts to decline, especially on heavy volume, it is time to admit that you may be wrong and sell before the loss is too steep. If the stock rebounds after you sell, you can always re-enter your position. Cutting losses is the best insurance an investor can have in their portfolio. By developing rules and eliminating emotion, investors can start selecting high quality stocks and buying them at their proper purchase points. This will lower your risk and help prevent you from using insurance. In my previous post, I explained how to develop a watch list of high quality stocks using fundamental and technical analysis.

About the Author

Chris Perruna

http://www.marketstockwatch.com

Chris is the founder and CEO of MarketStockWatch.com, an internet community that teaches you how to invest your money with solid rules. We don’t stop at just showing you our daily and weekly screens, we teach you how to make you own screens through education. Through our philosophy, you will be able to create your own methods and styles to become successful.

As an investor you will want to check out any equity before you buy it. Many investors go to Morningstar which is one of the largest providers of mutual fund information in the world. It is assumed that their information is correct. After all that is what you are paying for.

Recently the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) called them on the carpet for not correcting an error within a reasonable time (whatever that is according to the SEC). Everyone makes errors and this was no big deal.

It seems that when you went to their site and drew up a chart or asked for statistics on Rock Canyon Top Flight mutual fund it failed to notify the potential buyer that the fund had issued a very large dividend of approximately 25% and the NAV (Net Asset Value) dropped from $15 to $11 to reflect the $4.00 dividend.

When you ask for a chart of this fund on MarketWatch, Yahoo, TheStreet or Bloomberg they only post the NAV and do not make any adjustment for the dividend or capital gains distributions. Looking at the chart it appears the fund fell out of bed. Because I look at so many charts I knew immediately that this was a distribution and not some calamity. It is best to call the fund to verify this.

Most funds that make dividend and capital gains distributions usually do so in December, some in November and very few at other times during the year.

Some nitpicker called the SEC and made a complaint about Morningstar. Not that I am a big fan of them (in fact I think their reports are worthless) they get their price information from other sources such as the above. If you are not familiar with the requirement of mutual funds to disburse their profit before year end you might be fooled when you see the price suddenly drop.

This is important for potential investors. I caution everyone to get a chart on the Internet of at least a one year performance of any mutual fund before buying. It is better to go back to year 2000 to see if the fund manager was able to keep from losing money during the last 4 years. Almost none of them could so they bamboozle about how they did better than the S&P500 Index which had a huge loss of 50% and remains down 25% from those highs at this time. Don’t fall for that one.

Once again I caution that any purchase should have an exit plan. One of the basic rules of investing is never to lose a lot if you are wrong. Small losses will not ruin your portfolio, but big losses can ruin your retirement. Set your loss limit (5%, 10% or ?) and stick with it.

Charts can help you with buying/selling decisions, but check out their accuracy as charting is not an exact science.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

You should ignore analysts on TV, the radio, the newspaper and all other TALKING HEADS when it comes to investing! What stocks do they talk about? - The same old group, every day of every year - Why? Because they don’t know any better, they are sheep like the general public, repeating what every economic textbook says and every other economist tells them to say. Everyday, the same companies are highlighted on the evening news -

WHY?

They aren’t going anywhere. Some of the stocks that make the headlines every night were leaders of the market 20 years ago. New cycles bring new leaders; this has been proven year in and year out. So many of these TALKING HEADS shout out about "buy and hold" but what are they really holding? They hold old high-flyers that were superstars but have now become fallen stars that sit 20%, 50% or even 90% off of their all-time highs (some may have given you a small return - 10% or less over the past 5 years - WOW - BIG DEAL!). Yes, maybe over 15 or 20 years, you will get your money back - but what is the point? Many of these "so-called" investors tell you how they own XYZ stock and it has returned them 65% BUT they leave out the key factor that it has taken 16 years to get to that point.

One of the strongest and most promising stocks of the early 1900’s (1920 decade) was RCA - this stock was one that people claimed you put in your portfolio and hold it till near death - it will NEVER fall and if it does, hold on because it will come back. Well, let’s take a look: RCA soared over 1100% during the 1920’s and crashed with the rest of the market in the early 1930’s. It went from a low 0f $8.70 to a high of $106 to a crash level of $3.00. Some said to hold, some said buy on every dip. - Guess what, it didn’t climb back to pre-crash levels until 1963! 30 years to break even for some. Maybe that stock in your portfolio is the RCA of yesterday; history always repeats itself because human nature is always the same!

Stocks are worthy to be held over long periods of time, this is a proven fact but don’t EVER hold a stock when it is flashing SELL signals left and right (especially if everyone on TV is telling you to buy now on the dip, "it is a bargain"). These talking heads were saying this about every stock on their computer screen in 2000 and 2001 - "buy the dip". The only dip was the guy on TV and all of the suckers watching him/her. I don’t mean to offend anyone but you need to take control of your investing life, you need to learn why stocks go up, why they go down and that NO STOCK is immune to a bear market like the one we just had.

Leaders of the market now, won’t be leaders in the future - on some rare occasions, a stock here or there will defy everything and grow decade after decade, but even these stocks end their amazing rise at some point. Same is true for old leaders, they won’t lead the markets of today - they become too large and their growth slows, preventing them from being excellent growth stocks and giving you excellent returns. Now - I never said you couldn’t own a stock like this, many people are satisfied with these companies, they "feel secure", that is fine; everyone has different goals.

Let the market tell you what is going up or down. Watch "sister stocks", I talk about them in our education section of the website. What do I mean by sister stocks? They are stocks that are in the same industry. When an industry is strong, most of the stocks in this group will rise, hand in hand. (I say most - not all, laggards always stay behind). Fundamentals will be strong for most stocks in the group and technicals will guide you along the trip - think of technicals as a road map.

Once fundamentals have been established, check the charts, if several stocks from a particular group are breaking out of bases, this is a strong sign that something great is about to happen in this group. The more positive the overall market the better the group will perform (bear markets tend to hold down just about everyone). Why buy a stock that has great fundamentals in a weak group? If all other stocks in that group are acting weak, this may be telling you that the "one" bright spot in this group will eventually come back to the pack, so don’t chance it. Investing is about lowering your risk! Don’t take a risk on a stock that looks good but the industry is hurting.

Buy the leader of a group where several stocks are showing strength. Never buy the cheap stock that is lagging in performance, this is a sure way of losing money - buy the best of the group - the one with the best fundamentals (accelerating earnings, ROE, sales, etc.) and technicals (basing pattern, breakouts on huge volume, relative strength, etc…). What may look high to the general public; usually turns out to be low to the smart professional investor. I am not talking about the "talking heads" on TV - the smart investors work for institutions - they move the market! When they buy, everyone knows because volume jumps to extreme levels or levels not seen in prior months or years. The everyday guy doesn’t have this power - ONLY institutions have this power - learn to understand this power, here lies the smart money.

Finally, as I grind this educational information into your subconscious mind, ignore the "Talking Heads" and learn to listen to the market. Price and volume will always give you the best advice.

About the Author

Chris Perruna

http://www.marketstockwatch.com

Chris is the founder and CEO of MarketStockWatch.com, an internet community that teaches you how to invest your money with solid rules. We don’t stop at just showing you our daily and weekly screens, we teach you how to make you own screens through education. Through our philosophy, you will be able to create your own methods and styles to become successful.

(1) Stock Market is Tough Place to Make Any Money Consistently

NASDAQ or SP&500 averaged about -6% per year for 5 years between 1999 and 2003. Many individual investors who made killing in the internet bubble period got wiped out during those 5 years. Many who trusted Wall Street experts by investing their life savings into mutual fund had rude awakening after the huge loss and scandals in many of the famous fund names.

Numerous academic studies have shown that more than 90% of mutual funds failed to beat market over the long run and that more than 90% of individual investors lost money in the stock market. Too many people and too many Wall Street experts or mutual fund managers are buying and selling stocks like madmen, with no sound strategy or any hope of long term success. Ironically, they’re the ones who create opportunities for prudent, long term oriented investors.

To be successful in stock market, you either have to become an expert yourself or to seek help from real successful experts. Stock market is such a brutal place that there is no room for half-expert or expert pretenders. The truth is that only a small percentage of disciplined and experienced people earn disproportionate huge amount of return, many times at the expense of the rest. It is an insult to "Wall Street expert" professional title when so many of such "expert pretenders" failed to beat index or merely stay break-even.

(2) Majority of huge performance claims in Ads by "Experts" are not real

Too many investment newsletters or hot mutual funds touted their huge past performance and went into disaster later on. Who do you believe? I have been in this stock market long enough to know that majority of their claims are not "real". I will tell you why below.

The first reason is simply due to "cheating". Let’s be honest about many Ads. Many of them do not tell the whole and true story of their performance. For example, they would tout huge percentage of gains for certain winning stocks and hide the losing stocks. If you look deeper into their whole portfolio performance, their portfolio performance was not impressive at all. Many investment newsletters will have multiple portfolios in publication. In their ads, they will only mention the performance of the winning portfolio and hide the losing portfolio. The problem with multiple portfolios is that when you subscribe to their newsletters, you would not easily know which portfolio out of many will have best performance in the long run. Which portfolio do you follow? Most important of all, which portfolio out of many does the newsletter author invests for his/her own money? If the newsletter author or the mutual fund manager does not invest into a portfolio himself or herself, how would you trust their services?

Even if past performance of a newsletter or a mutual fund was pretty good, it may not indicate good performance in the future. Many hot technology mutual funds jumped up 100% or more in the 90’s and dived to their death after 90% to 99% of loss. Certain investment methods such as growth stocks investing are known to be risky. Momentum investing or day trading methods are known to be extremely risky methods that can wipe out life savings over night. There is simply no free lunch. While a risky method can produce fabulous gain in relative short term, over the long run, a risky method is more likely to make people poorer rather than richer even if a short term gain was gigantic. Gigantic short term gain is just a dangerous stock market trap to lure the inexperienced people into the market. Dreaming for instant satisfaction of huge short term gain overnight with speculation is just a recipe for disaster ahead.

(3) Value Investing is the Only Proven Safe Method

Value mutual funds are well known to have lower volatility than growth mutual funds. Numerous industry and acedemic studies have shown that value stocks as a group performed far better than growth stocks in bear market. Many technology and internet so called "growth stocks" lost 90% to 99% of value in just a couple of years after 2000 while many value stocks went up during the same time frame.

In fact, the single most important element to obtain high investment performance over the long run is to maintain MARGIN OF SAFETY of a portfolio. That is why the greatest investor Warren Buffet once quote "Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.".

(4) Value Investing is the Proven Method to Make Big Money in the Stock Market

I know that I’m going to catch a lot of flak for saying this, and that many people will misunderstand what I’m saying. There are certainly other methods of investing or trading, which made people rich. There are certainly many under- performing value mutual funds, which give people wrong impression that value investing is equivalent of low performance with less risk.

However, I want to emphasize that in fact value investing is investment style that can obtain high performance with less risk. I want to stand by my above statement for the following reasons:

* In the early years of my investment career, I have studied and tried all kinds of well known methods of famous investors or traders, Short term trading, Momentum trading, Technical Analysis, CANSLIM, growth stock long term buy and hold, Random Walk theory, etc. I have been there and I have done there. Evidenced by my past investment performance, value investing is the only method that delivered gigantic investment return consistently for me over past many years. In 2003, I have made more than $150,000 in stock market with value investing method. In 2004, I have made even more money than 2003 so far. With the power of compounding, there is really no upper limit for the investment profit with value investing.

* In 1984, Warren Buffet gave a speech titled The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville, which categorized performance of many famous value investors who beat market year in and year out. Many of people mentioned in this article are legendary multi-billionaire right now. It is true that only a small percentage of investors can beat market consistently. However, it is not by chance at all that so many of students of Benjamin Graham became super riches in America while other methods have not produced that many rich people. It is also not coincident at all that the second richest person in the world is a value investor named Warren Buffet, a student of Benjamin Graham as well.

(5) Value investing will not distract your regular job

The nicest thing about value investing is that it will not distract your regular job if you choose not to stare at the stock market frequently in your office. In fact, it is quite healthy to forget about stock market in your office and worry about that only at your home after work.

Many newbies in the stock market still believe that if they stare at stock price quote closely, they can obtain better chances of winning. It will not. Staring at the stock quote is least important part of this game. In fact, staring closely at the stock price quote is more likely to create a loser rather than a winner because of greed and fear in the stock market. The more one is unable to resist the mad mood of Mr. Market, the more likely one is unable to invest successfully with value investment method.

I am not saying that successful value investing does not require time. The time you will need in value investing depends on the investment vehicle you utilize. If you invest with a value mutual fund, you will not need much time in stock market and you only need to follow up quarterly with your fund’s performance. If you are a passive investor of my investment newsletter Blast Investor Real-time Plus and you follow my model portfolio passively, you will only need to pay attention to my infrequent trade alert closely and read my newsletter issues every 2 weeks. If you invest by yourself, you will certainly need hours of time every week to look at hundreds of value stock leads and do your own due diligence by reading 10Q or 10K SEC filling, or by listening to conference calls, or by talking to company’s management.

(6) Successful Value Investing is Hard, But You can Do It!

I certainly do not want to make you to believe that value investing is as easy as reading couple of books. Value investing not only requires tons of knowledge and expertise in financial analysis, accounting, US tax law, US bankruptcy law, etc., it also requires real life training of right psychology to fight against greed and fear in the stock market. It is hard to do.

However, successful investing certainly can be done and I have done it over past decade myself. You certainly want to look at my investing articles of this web site for more information.

(7) You need to start early in value investing

Let’s be honest about value investing, it is not a get-rich- quick scam and it takes time to really make living with value investing without need of your regular job. You need large starting principle if you want to make living from stock market investment than your salary.

By reading Warren Buffet’s article above, you can pretty much guess that successful value investors can achieve 20% to 30% per year performance consistently over the long run regardless of whether market is bear or bull although it is possible to obtain significantly higher performance in earlier investment years due to smaller fund size and luck. 20% or 30% more consistent investment return is already very high return over the long run. Since Peter Lynch retired from Fidelity, you can rarely find a mutual fund with that kind of performance over past many years.

The best approach is to treat stock market investment as side business in addition to your regular job. Your regular job help you pay your bills and help you earn the initial principle for value investing. Once your investment net worth surpasses $100,000, sooner or later you will realize that your regular job salary can hardly keep up with compounded rate of investment return. Too many people naively believe that they can get rich quick with speculative trading method in stock market rather than a hard work with a job and value investing at side. It is a lot easier to make your first $50,000 net worth with a job rather than speculation in stock market.

Even if you do not have large sum of money right now as principle to make really big profit out of value investing, you still want to start value investing early so that you can learn in and out of value investing in your earlier years of investing in the stock market. Successful investment is long term process. The earlier you start investing successfully, the better off your pocketbook will be, and the quicker you will reach your financial freedom. Let’s do a quick math, if your starting capital for investing is $50,000 and your annual compouned rate of return is 30%, you will need 9 years to surpass $500,000 net worth. However, to turn $500,000 net worth into 1 million, you only need 3 more years, think hard!

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The gleam and bright lights of Wall Street lure in many new investors each year, only to send them home crying to their friends and family. Why do so many people fail when it comes to the stock market? The reason is very simple: Hard work! Most people are looking for a quick buck or a fast path to riches. This is not the case when it comes to investing in individual stocks. If you wish to invest in stocks, treat it like a business, NOT A HOBBY. For example: A retail outfit can’t make money if it doesn’t have goods to sell, the same goes for investors, without cash, you can’t invest. What do I mean? All investors need rules and you need to follow these rules or money WILL be LOST. If you lose your initial investment, you are out of business (just like the retail store). I don’t necessarily care what your rules are but they need to be proven and then followed to a "T".

Think about this for a moment: How much time do you spend researching and following up on your investments? Most people will spend more time researching their next car to buy, their next pair of sneakers, the best suit, the best dress, the best pasta sauce, etc. but these same people rarely spend more than 15 minutes a month researching their own stocks. I know of a person that spends hours clipping coupons (saving cents to a few dollars) but just minutes investing thousands in stocks.

This is why the majority of people FAIL at investing, because they don’t know what they are doing, they don’t care to know where their money is and they don’t know who to hire to invest their money. If you are not interested in learning how to invest properly using your OWN system of trial and error over many years, I suggest that you invest in mutual funds or similar diversified vehicles. Over the long run (minimum 20 years), mutual funds and dollar cost averaging will give you favorable results with minimal worries. I will elaborate into methods that can be used to invest successfully in individuals stocks in following articles.

About the Author:

Chris Perruna

http://www.marketstockwatch.com

Chris is the founder and CEO of MarketStockWatch.com, an internet community that teaches you how to invest your money with solid rules. We don’t stop at just showing you our daily and weekly screens, we teach you how to make you own screens through education. Through our philosophy, you will be able to create your own methods and styles to become successful.