Successful investment strategies require an understanding of the forces of stock market nature, and disciplined rules of portfolio management. If you can transition back to individual securities, you will do better at moving toward your goals, most of the time, because the opportunities are out there — all of the time.

The Dow, Investment Grade Value Stocks, and Alternative Investments The idea that an investment portfolio can contain any number of unrelated speculations without itself being speculative is the stuff that Wall Street’s alternative investment purveyors are selling. True investment portfolios need none of this, and the numbers prove it true beyond any doubt. There is [...]

These ETFs have a basis in IGVSI quality equities, and could be excellent trading vehicles. Certainly, they can be expected to track the IGVSI and the more popular (but totally manipulated) DJIA and S & P 500 averages.

But traded they must be, or they are just another “buy ‘n hold” archaism. ETFs are actually not managed at all. The “passive management” referred to is merely the readjustment of holdings to mirror the weightings in a separate and totally unmanaged index.

To most investors, the DJIA provides all of the information they think they need, and they worship it mindlessly — thinking it has mystical predictive and analytic powers far beyond the scope of any other market number.

“Hey ‘Deep Pockets’, what were you doing on October 19th, 1987?” the Wall Street Jungle reporter asked. I was gritting my teeth, shaking more than just a little, palms sweaty but placing dozens of individual orders for the best NYSE, dividend-paying, companies — at prices that nearly everyone thought would drop even further. Looking around [...]

The average yield on these ten closed end funds was 6.88% on January 14th 2011; the funds are priced at a discount from NAV of roughly 6%;

There are at least eight reasonable explanations for recent price weakness — there are at least eight excellent reasons why investors should be viewing this weakness as a buying opportunity. Clearly, the financial press has not attended any of my seminars on income investing. Lower prices and higher yields are good news for income investors!

IGVSI Rally Continues – Profit Taking Opportunities Take the Spotlight! The Market Cycle Investment Management model has outperformed the popular investment indices since it was first developed in 1970. It features an approach that embraces market volatility; selects securities using strict quality, diversification, and income standards; and operates under strict disciplines for asset allocation, buying [...]

Errors occur most frequently when judgment is rocked out of the boat by emotion, hindsight, and misconceptions about how securities react to varying economic, political, and hysterical currents. You are the commander of your investment yacht. Use these ten risk-minimizers as investment capital life preservers:

Risk minimization requires the identification of what’s inside a portfolio. Risk control requires decision-making by the owner of the investment assets. Risk management requires a selection process from a universe of securities that meet a known set of qualitative standards.