Investments

Thousands of investment advisors recommended stop loss orders to their clients. Now it looks like this advice may have been the cause of the May 6, 2010 market plummet.

When the saying first circulated, May was flat. Since 1987, however, May has done phenomenally well, averaging 2.11%.

Your investments should be working for you, appreciating more than inflation to become an engine of growth that pays you money and provides some measure of financial freedom.

Good things do come from France. Frenchman Antoine Deneriaz captured Olympic gold in the men’s downhill skiing event beating out favorites Austria’s Michael Walchhofer and America’s Bode Miller. His win meant flying madly off jumps and being determined to finish first or break every bone in his body. Your investments shouldn’t be like that.

In both good times and bad times, investing is really about managing your emotions. If you want to be an investor, you have to grow to understand not only the relationship between risk and return, but also your own reaction to it.

Those who moved their investments to the supposed safety of Treasury bond investments were deeply disappointed.

David Marotta discusses 2010 in review and the outlook for 2011.

David Marotta discusses what makes certain investments look attractive.

Volatility, therefore, is a matter of perspective. Like the crack of a whip.

There are significant advantages to using different investment vehicles in different types of accounts.

Investing in some mutual funds is like buying a $3 candy bar and paying $5 shipping and handling. All mutual funds are not created equal, and you can boost your returns by doing a little homework before writing a check.

To safeguard your money, you must be able to extricate yourself from any bad investment quickly. Of course, the companies that sell mistakes don’t want you to be able to do that, so they use financial hooks to hold your money captive.

There is always a day of reckoning when people use debt to leverage their investments.

Systemic problems in your portfolio will continue even after the markets rebound.

Investors are fickle. Investing should not be. When your investments go down, even slightly, you may be tempted to make poor choices.

The markets are inherently volatile. Remain humble. Diversify. Avoid fear.

If you think hiding money under your mattress is a risk-free way of building wealth, think again.

Marvel only gets 31% of its revenue from publishing comic books.

Sand can be used to further diversify your portfolio.

Those actually seeing the movie in a theater provide only 14% of a film’s revenue.

Only recently has Main Street been so fully invested.

Stress released in one area results in delayed releases in other parts of the economy.

Rebalancing means selling what has done well and buying what has done poorly, not visa versa.

My grandfather Donald Mortlock worked on Wall Street during and after the 1929 crash. The firm he worked for was a “market maker,” a company which helped to literally “make a market” in several stocks.

To meet your goals you don’t need to beat the investment returns of everyone else. Instead, you want a decent return in order to retire comfortably and to ensure a cash flow which will support your standard of living.

2005 was a year which showed the weakness of limiting your asset allocation to US stocks and US bonds.

You can smooth your returns without any of hedge fund’s drawbacks.

Wanting to avoid regulations, Hedge funds appeal to investor’s snobbery to make it seem like a privilege.

You take all the risk, but the manager gets twenty percent of any winnings. This is not a good compensation scheme.

Hedge claims are equivalent to “All of the coins I want to tell you about came up heads.”

As Hedge funds grow in popularity, beware of following the lemmings.

ETFs combine tax efficiency with low expenses.

If the S&P were a financial advisor it would say, “Let’s buy mostly large cap growth stocks in the industry that did well last year with a high price per earnings ratio.”

If you have a large portfolio, hire a professional manager.

Diversify your business and your investments. That way fads and trends won’t determine your financial success.

Adapting and reacting to trends is important in investing and crucial in small business.

I will give you the forecast for the next TEN years in the US Markets: Up, Down, Up, Up, Down, Up, Down, Up, Up, Up. These predictions are not in chronological order.

Inflation ultimately has to rise and keep pace with increases in the money supply.

It is usually better to be a seller of options than a buyer of options.

Today, we have 8,269 mutual funds. About one-third of all common stocks are held in mutual funds.

If you rely on a commission-based financial product salesperson, you will probably be sold the wrong kind of funds.

Congress contributed greatly to the bubble through the distorted incentives created by the tax code.

The Stock Market will Drop Further.

The market is very “pricey” when old-fashioned measures of stock market valuation are examined.

When (not if) the Federal Reserve Board increases interest rates, this will bring the stock-market party to an end as higher interest will cause both stocks and bonds to fall in value.

Periodically, investors should review their portfolios with a view toward rebalancing the assets.