I’m going to disagree with each of the answers below although they’re not completely wrong. They prejudge you and that’s a mistake for they don’t know your risk tolerance or depth of available investment capital.
All investment vehicles tend to trend long term enough to establish some modicum of investment worthiness, else they’d not be viewed as investment opportunities in the first place. Where things get hairy is in predicting when the bubble will burst and then—how dramatic will the bursting be?
The best advice I could ever give anybody when it comes to investing is a line I created last year:
A successful investor must let go of the past for there’s no future in it.
History, we’re told, teaches but that doesn’t mean each of us will learn or even be open to the possibility of lessons staring us in the face. So I read the historical commentary showing up in all investment periodicals but I’ve come to the conclusion that my best learning opportunities won’t come at the hands of others who either passed or failed. They will come from my own experiences utilizing my intellect and my instinctual capabilities and, hopefully, wielding them into reasonably profitable investment opportunities.
Thus, you might want to let go of the notion that there’s safety in trends. If things always stayed the same, there’d be no surprises in life. Everybody would put $100/mo. into the stock market and after so many years, it’d be the easy life for all. But as we know, things DO change all the time and it’s by becoming sensitive to the possibility of such changes plus great instincts and follow-up resourcefulness after market crashes and political debacles that we get to qualify our ability to create our own trends.
Big money is not a given. If it were, everyone would ride off into the sunset astride a pot of gold. Trends, I hold, are sucker bets. I’m usually in the role of contrarian and tend to do well betting against the trend. I did well buying Bank of America when it slipped to $4.96/share in the Spring of 2009, GE at $9.09—both of which played against the recommended trend of the time.
Today I’m placing most of my bets on China, again going against the trend that has people predicting great things for the US recovery. I don’t buy the hype whereas I know enough about China to see vast opportunity in pharmaceuticals, animal feed and fertilizers and natural gas utilities. Again, I’m not suggesting trends are bad—only that we have to seek them out for ourselves because it’s foolish to trust others to do it for you. That means you have to learn and study and research and manage your own investments—ETFS can lose too, regardless of their relative safety some tout.
And I am not recommending investing at this time in domestic companies as I expect a very significant pullback by April and May of this year. i see a correction of 18% to 20% and possibly even worse. It’s due and the market is feeling toppy to me. This is another reason I’m putting my money overseas where the government is more stable than ours.
unless you are a successful stock trader with reasonable capital behind you [that means millions], learn to successfully trade stocks first, not currencies or commodities.
Even the successful traders in currencies and commodities of past years now agree that the big money players are squashing the little guys — they simply have the best information and thus make the best trades long before you find out.
Read the comments of Curtis Faith, for example, on why even he doesn’t trade commodities any more.
I’m going to disagree with each of the answers below although they’re not completely wrong. They prejudge you and that’s a mistake for they don’t know your risk tolerance or depth of available investment capital.
All investment vehicles tend to trend long term enough to establish some modicum of investment worthiness, else they’d not be viewed as investment opportunities in the first place. Where things get hairy is in predicting when the bubble will burst and then—how dramatic will the bursting be?
The best advice I could ever give anybody when it comes to investing is a line I created last year:
A successful investor must let go of the past for there’s no future in it.
History, we’re told, teaches but that doesn’t mean each of us will learn or even be open to the possibility of lessons staring us in the face. So I read the historical commentary showing up in all investment periodicals but I’ve come to the conclusion that my best learning opportunities won’t come at the hands of others who either passed or failed. They will come from my own experiences utilizing my intellect and my instinctual capabilities and, hopefully, wielding them into reasonably profitable investment opportunities.
Thus, you might want to let go of the notion that there’s safety in trends. If things always stayed the same, there’d be no surprises in life. Everybody would put $100/mo. into the stock market and after so many years, it’d be the easy life for all. But as we know, things DO change all the time and it’s by becoming sensitive to the possibility of such changes plus great instincts and follow-up resourcefulness after market crashes and political debacles that we get to qualify our ability to create our own trends.
Big money is not a given. If it were, everyone would ride off into the sunset astride a pot of gold. Trends, I hold, are sucker bets. I’m usually in the role of contrarian and tend to do well betting against the trend. I did well buying Bank of America when it slipped to $4.96/share in the Spring of 2009, GE at $9.09—both of which played against the recommended trend of the time.
Today I’m placing most of my bets on China, again going against the trend that has people predicting great things for the US recovery. I don’t buy the hype whereas I know enough about China to see vast opportunity in pharmaceuticals, animal feed and fertilizers and natural gas utilities. Again, I’m not suggesting trends are bad—only that we have to seek them out for ourselves because it’s foolish to trust others to do it for you. That means you have to learn and study and research and manage your own investments—ETFS can lose too, regardless of their relative safety some tout.
And I am not recommending investing at this time in domestic companies as I expect a very significant pullback by April and May of this year. i see a correction of 18% to 20% and possibly even worse. It’s due and the market is feeling toppy to me. This is another reason I’m putting my money overseas where the government is more stable than ours.
You sound like a novice investor because those with experience would not be asking that.
Currency trading is highly speculative and not meant for novice investors. You should stick to mutual funds and blue chip stocks.
Try reading "Investing for Dummies" to learn more.
unless you are a successful stock trader with reasonable capital behind you [that means millions], learn to successfully trade stocks first, not currencies or commodities.
Even the successful traders in currencies and commodities of past years now agree that the big money players are squashing the little guys — they simply have the best information and thus make the best trades long before you find out.
Read the comments of Curtis Faith, for example, on why even he doesn’t trade commodities any more.