Personal Money Management 101 Blog

There is widespread agreement that index (tracker) funds produce superior returns to the average actively managed fund (see Why Managed Funds are Bad for your Wealth). That is, if you invest in a tracker you’ll most likely make more than if you invested in active management. It must be said that some active funds do beat the index; the problem is they can’t be identified in advance. Trying to find them is akin to playing roulette. The corollary of this is that the bulk of your stock portfolio be held in index tracker funds or Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Read the rest of this entry »

by Steve Selengut

Gets your attention, doesn’t it? The unfortunate thing though, is that most people will react negatively to this intentionally inflammatory, media-ready, title statement. Has some Wall Street virus attacked our financial experience memory chip? Bouncing around unpredictably is precisely what the markets have always done. In the last forty years, there have been no less than ten 20% or greater corrections followed by rallies that brought the markets to significantly higher levels. Volatility is not a bad thing— a non-event, even.

Read Volatility Rocks The Investment Markets in full 

Steve Selengut
http://www.sancoservices.com/ | http://www.kiawahgolfinvestmentseminars.com
Professional Portfolio Management since 1979. Author of: “The Brainwashing of the American Investor: The Book that Wall Street Does Not Want YOU to Read”, and “A Millionaire’s Secret Investment Strategy”

How active should you be in re-arranging your investment portfolio? For an ideal investor in an ideal world, the simple answer is as little as possible. But this assumes, of course, you always make the right decisions and that life is completely stable. In reality things change, in the economy at large as well as in your personal circumstances.

Are you an investor, or a trader? These operators adopt very different strategies and it’s important to know which you are. See Investment vs Trading and Is Trading Dumb?. This article is aimed at the investor. The message is – don’t be a trader by the back door. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve played a good first half by working hard, and being astute and disciplined enough to build up some assets. Now, with retirement on the horizon, your financial focus needs to shift from building wealth to making sure that you get to keep what you have, get the best returns from it, and – when you make that inevitable journey upstairs – pass as much as possible to your loved ones. Read the rest of this entry »

Trading is the buying and selling of stocks or other financial instruments over short periods with a view to making a profit between the opening and closing of a position. By contrast, investing is the accumulation of assets over the long term. Although investors adjust their portfolios, this is part of a longer strategy rather than creaming-off short-term profits.

Investments consistently grow over the long term, investing is rational. But trading is closer to an afternoon at the races. Read the rest of this entry »