Remember When Investing Was Easy?

By James | August 11, 2010

Do you remember when investing was easy? I do. It all started around November 1998. I remember the many brokerage company commercials.

Heck, eTrade spent $2 million on a Super Bowl ad staring a dancing monkey.

Those were the halcyon days.

Profitable day-trading was as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Place kamagra kamagra buy order for any stock with a 4-letter ticker symbol(i.e. NASDAQ stocks)
2. Play video games for the rest of day
3. Place sell order at the close and count your profits.

Investing was even easier.All you had to do was buy whatever new fancy Internet mutual fund just opened up (remember Monument?) and hold to the moon.

Unfortunately, those days are long gone. Along with them, the buy-and-hold myth invented by mutual fund companies. Remember, they only make money when you Generic Levitra Professional Online Pharmacy are fully invested.

Did you know that mutual fund managers are evaluated solely on how well they perform versus their benchmark?

The benchmark is the standard by which they are evaluated.

Their only goal is to beat their benchmark.

They do not care if you lose money or not.

A perfect example is the bear market of 2008-2009 during which time the S&P 500 fell more than 55%.

If your large-cap mutual fund lost 48%, then according to conventional *ahem* “wisdom”, you should be thanking your mutual fund manger for doing a great job.

Does cytotec order that seem a wise source for your investing advice?

I don’t know about you, but if I ever opened up my account statement to see that my retirement portfolio had been cut in half I most certainly would not be thinking of “thanking” buy cheap amoxicillin purchase cialis cheap anyone for it.

The idea that a 40% or 50% loss can be considered “good” makes absolutely no sense to me.

Investing isn’t easy anymore, buy clomid nolvadex but it can still be simple.

Today, you need a combination of true diversification and trend recognition to be successful.

By trend recognition I mean something to minimize risk by keeping you out of the market and in cash during bear markets.

An buy cialis online element of market timing can not only brand amoxicillin name propecia online reduce drawdowns but also increase overall returns by avoiding large losses during extended bear markets.

So, get out there and research some simple market timing methods.

Are you prepared for the next bear market?