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.

The Market Cycle Investment Management methodology combines risk minimization, asset allocation, equity trading, investment grade value stock investing, and base income generation in a time frame that recognizes and embraces the reality of cycles.

Why do we jump through all of these “prevent-defense” hoops? Because we just don’t know how or have the patience to design and manage a classic, safer, plain vanilla, stocks and bonds portfolio. The market cycle is the favorite son of the investment gods. You either make it your friend or fail as an investor!

Over the past 30 years Federal Tax receipts (Corporate, Personal, Estate, Excise, Gift, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, et al) have averaged less than 20% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Read that again, and don’t think for a minute that it’s not a large number. Why isn’t that enough?

Unlike conventional mutual funds, CEFs do not issue and redeem shares directly with investors at net asset value. CEFs are listed on national securities exchanges, where shares of the Investment Company are purchased and sold in transactions with other investors, just like individual company stocks, and most often not at net asset value.

Big publishers want to sell already big names; discovering new ones is not in their wheelhouse. Are they responsible for the problems in the financial markets? Of course not, but they do have a perverse, if indirect, impact. By constantly publishing the same Wall Street friendly message, they contribute to the brainwashing.