- My Early Beginnings in the Stock Market
- My Investment Experience Spans Over 50 Years
- The Purpose of This Book
- Managing Your Financial Affairs Is Critical
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
My Investment Experience Spans Over 50 Years
Having studied the stock market for over 50 years, I’ve invested in mutual funds, stocks, options, futures, and commodities. Also, I’ve day traded NASDAQ stocks and E-mini-NASDAQ futures from 1998–2000 during the Internet and technology boom times. Additionally, I have read more than 500 books on investing and trading over the years, and I’ve become proficient in technical analysis. I’ve posted more than 60 financial book reviews on Amazon. Moreover, I’ve written investing software reviews for Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities magazine, and articles for SFO and Active Trader magazines. In addition, I’ve used many investing and trading software programs over the years, including Telescan, OmniTrader, DTN, TradeStation, ULTRA, VectorVest, and High Growth Stock Investor. Also, I continue to use many free charting, investing, and trading sites on the Internet.
I have subscribed to The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, and for pleasure I read many financial magazines, including Money, SmartMoney, Forbes, Fortune, and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. And, when I have the time, I go to my local library to read Investor’s Business Daily, Morningstar Mutual Funds, Value Line Investment Survey, S&P Outlook, and The New York Times business section. Over the years, I’ve attended many online trader expos, Money Shows, and specialized trading and investing courses. And, of course, I access useful information about investing on the Internet.
As an investor and trader, I’ve had successes and failures. But after many years of mixed results, I’ve found that mechanical non-emotional trading and investing has the highest probability of making money. In the future, I expect to not only reap more consistent returns, but also avoid bear markets. Perhaps you will follow in my footsteps and decide to use the active investing approach provided in this book or one that you develop for yourself.
I urge you to sit down and review your past investment results and determine your rate of return through today. If you are disappointed with your results for any reason, you will hopefully benefit from the approach I recommend in this book. It is critical to your investment success to find a consistent way to make money while minimizing your risk. I’ve concluded that buy-and-hold investing is very risky and can lead to huge losses; therefore, I’ve developed a more realistic, easy-to-use approach that will help you become a more consistent and more profitable investor. My goal is to provide you with the key to investment success, which is to know what to buy, when to buy, and when to sell. Profits need to be taken; otherwise, you may give them back over and over again in bear markets. That is not a smart way to manage your money. I am using the approach outlined in this book to invest my money, and I expect to have many profitable years, mainly by avoiding the bear markets and certainly by making better-than-average market returns during the bull markets.