Wealth Of Habits

Habit
People who lack the wealth they desire, lack the habits that produce wealth.  There is much material on the habits of successful people, not the least of which is Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People".  This video is a high level review of that popular, and successful book.



Character
There are multiple takes by numerous people on which habits are important, and how many there are.  Let me make it simple.  From everything I have seen and read, wealthy, healthy and successful people have three character traits which allow them to maintain the appropriate habits.  They are: focus, discipline, and connection.

First Things First
Wealthy people focus on the things that are important to their goals (which they have written down) and accomplish those tasks before they become incredibly urgent.  They have the discipline to put first things first and to also make time for exercise, friends and family, and learning.

Common Good
Zig Ziglar has always maintained we can get everything in life we want, if we just help enough other people get what they want.  An understanding that we, collectively, are greater than the sum of the parts is often missing in all aspects of life, today.  Anything we do to undermine any of the parts (people) of that whole is detrimental, not only to them, but to our success, as well.  The common good, as well as our own, is best served through an attitude of humbleness, and gratitude.

While character is something that can take a life-time to build, habits, only take about 30 days.  Good habits build good character.  You too could be on your way to a healthy, and wealthy future, in just about 30 days.        

I'm Absolutely Positive

Too Critical?
I know I sound critical of the financial services industry.  I've worked in the industry, I've watched it for years.  I've been there, done that, and got the T-shirt.  It is my personal experiences with the financial services industry that prevents me from believing their propaganda and the many cheerleaders who endorse their message (and receive compensation for doing so).  While critical of the financial services industry, I'm also very positive about our own ability, with the available technology today, to better the results of the average fund manager.  Remember, very few of them beat the market averages over the long term.

Tactics
I know people have difficulty believing they deserve better.  After all, the professionals are the best at doing what they do and I'm not disputing that.  That means, either I can settle for the bread crumbs they throw my way, or I can look for something better.  If we are trying for a different result, why would we try to mimic the professionals with their millions and billions of dollars for which they earn outlandish fees?  You and I have so much less.  I remain convinced that our primary advantage over the big professional fund managers is our ability to out-run them. That means being very tactical.  The philosophy of fund managers has always been to buy and hold.  I have said in this blog, and I've said for years, that buy-and-hold is a marketing strategy, not an investing strategy.

Trends
So, if we want to outperform buy-and-hold and run rings around these professional fund managers then how do we do it?   Many would tell me they don't have all day, every day, to sit in front of their computer watching markets, and playing with the numbers while trying to do better, especially when they don't even believe that timing the market is possible.  And that's fine.  People who don't believe it is possible will never be able to make it happen, anyway.  Faith is funny that way.  To outperform the average fund manager, people don't have to write a blog, they don't have to surf the internet every day, they don't have to crunch the numbers all the time.  We simply need to monitor trends; long or short, up or down.  I get confused as to why that is so hard to understand.  Just me?  I don't know.  Like I said, I don't understand why.

Profit
I'm not even saying we need to identify the very beginning of a trend.  Once the market confirms there is, in fact, a trend, then we can take part, and get out again when either the trend seems to be faltering, or when our profits are sufficient that we should take our money off the table.  Even if we get it right only fifty percent of the time, but cut our losses short, we still come out ahead.  So what if we can't identify how long the trend will actually continue?  I guarantee, another new one will shortly follow.

Charts
It doesn't take a huge amount of skill to read a chart.  People do it all the time.  We look at charts of the outdoor temperature, performance charts, health charts, progress charts, budgets, forecasts, to name a few.   Yes, it takes a little practice, it takes knowing what to look for and what to watch out for. In the end, anybody can do it, anybody who wants to, and has a little desire to spend a bit of time monitoring their investments in return for a greater than average payoff.  Again, I have to admit I don't know why more people don't take this approach.  I do know it's partly because people think it's too hard, and that it is a waste of time, especially since we are always told by the professionals we couldn't do it even if we tried, anyway.

Full Time Returns; Part Time Effort
As for me, I'm not giving up.  I will continue to blog.  I will continue to talk about the methods in which people can take control of their own destiny through just a little bit of time and a little bit of effort in order to make more money working part-time than any other part-time job would ever pay them, and even more than some full-time jobs.  It takes practice.  I'll grant the critics that, but it's neither too difficult, nor too time-consuming - let alone impossible - that most people shouldn't, at least, try.

What is your single biggest reason for not trying?  Care to share it?

Bernanke, The Face of Modern Day Capitalism

"I Don't Think So"
When asked if it were fair to say that Wall Street had benefited more than Main Street from the Federal Reserves' stimulus, Mr. Bernanke's response was "I don't think so".  It goes to show even Central Banksters are as much politician as they are bankster.

Survey Says...
C'mon.  The Federal Reserve has more than enough data at its disposal which should clearly show that the main benefactor in all of this is, in fact, Wall Street.  Stock market prices are racing to all-time highs while employment rates and the numbers for full time employment remain stuck in the mud.  Is Mr. Bernanke asking me to believe he is not aware of what those numbers really mean?

Lies, Damn Lies...
To me, the big problem in looking right at the camera and lying because they think that everyone else is too stupid to know any different, is it destroys the credibility of their whole argument.  They may not think we can prove they are lying, but we don't need degrees from Harvard University to know when they are, and where the money is ending up.  If they are lying about these things, then what else are they lying to us about?

Practice Makes Perfect
I was never a fan of the ideas that government's borrowing of more money is the solution to government's borrowing of too much money, or that banksters should be rewarded for gambling away the wealth of nations by giving them more money to practice with.

The Morale of The Story
In the end, Mr. Bernanke will be long gone and away from the scene when the problem chickens begin to come home to roost.  Again, the average working slob will be left picking up the pieces of yet another failed experiment - failed in the sense that it did not help anybody but the immediate benefactors.  Clearly, Mr. Bernanke and his ilk will have accomplished their mandate if they can suspend judgement just long enough that the perpetrators have enough time to laugh all the way to the bank before people wake up to the fact that new regulations are required that hold politicians, CEO's, and banksters, including Central Banksters to account.

Do you reckon they might end up wrecking the joint before that can happen?

Fight Back - Ellen Roseman

Click Here To See The Video

What To Buy
Ellen Roseman is the author of "Fight Back".  I have not read the book, but wanted to highlight some of the things said in this interview.  Ellen makes the point we need to invest only in the things we understand.  We should not buy products we don't understand especially since financial advisors get paid for selling us product, whether we understand what we are buying, or not.  Know how the advisor is compensated - it determines what they sell and what they don't.  Also, we are told to get references every time we hire a professional - why not for our financial advisor?  Don't stop there, either, search online.  Employers do it all the time now, we should as well for the people we want to hire.

Start Small
There is no other hobby, or part-time job that can make us the amount of income that investing can.  Why more people don't learn how, is beyond me.  Ellen suggests starting small and increasing the percentage of one's self-managed portfolio over time.  Avoid getting overwhelmed - start with the advice of the bank you already deal with.  As for international diversification, she recommends it.  To me, that is out-dated advice.  Inverse Exchange Traded Funds allow us to make money when the market is falling, not just when it is rising.      In my humble opinion, most people don't know enough about foreign markets to invest in them.  Paper trading is the best way to start to learn the mechanics of investing.  Investopedia has one such free account to start the learning process.

Have you ever used an inverse ETF, or started by paper-trading?

Market Volatility & Exchange Traded Funds

Exchange Traded Funds
The video that follows is about Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s) and the growth seen in that type of investment product.  I have chosen this particular video for a couple of reasons.  The first reason has to do with managing expenses within our portfolios and the second is to talk about the way in which I use ETF's.  iShares used to be a separate company that offered ETF’s.  It is now owned by Blackrock and is a subsidiary of that company.  The good news about ETF’s is they are cheaper to buy and own than mutual funds.  The bad news is ETF’s are not actively managed like most mutual funds. Since ETF’s normally mirror a particular index, they don't need to be managed the same way as a mutual fund.

Expenses
Personally, I like ETF’s because they offer better diversification than individual stocks, while at the same time, controlling expenses better than mutual funds (or buying the stocks individually).  I'm not a big fan of mutual funds.  The biggest reason is their larger fees which are not justifiable given most mutual funds under-perform the markets over longer periods of time.  I have owned many, many different mutual funds in the past.  Given the growth in the popularity of ETF’s in recent years, I have long since replaced all of my mutual funds with ETF’s.

Volatility
Periodically I will also trade individual stocks, but with the volatility in the current markets, I find that ETF’s provide me with much more diversification and less volatility than simply owning a few stocks.  Since I'm not a buy-and-hold type of investor, my goal is to own whatever sector is outperforming at any point in time.

Constructing Portfolios
The discussion in the video talks about creating portfolios using ETF’s.  Personally, I think that most portfolios are way, way, way over diversified and that's largely because of the need on the part of the financial services industry to sell more products.  More product, in my experience has never improved returns.  Some would argue it's not about returns, it's about the safety of our portfolio.  By spending only a few minutes a day on my investments, I get both.  I see no reason if we're actively managing our portfolios why we need any more than the top 60 companies in the TSX.  I understand most people don't actively manage their portfolios, but I have to believe they don’t understand the magnitude of the increase in returns they can achieve in only a few minutes a day.

Less Is More
Regardless, there are a couple of portfolios listed in this video.  Some people may want to model their own portfolio on one of those shown, and that's fine for people who are not actively managing their portfolios.  Myself, I tend to largely use ETF's, rather than stocks or mutual funds, but, I hold a very small number of ETF’s at any particular time because I'm only interested in the funds that are performing.  That is why I incorporate Technical Analysis into my methodology.  The non-performers are dropped from my portfolio once they stop outperforming.  Either way, whether  you want to build a portfolio of ETF's, or you simply want to use ETF's to dampen  the volatility in the current markets, the use of ETF's will reduce expenses and, to me, provide a better alternative than mutual funds

Would you care to share your preference(s)?

Click Here To See The Video

Reboot

Spring Break
Hey.  I'm back after being away a long period of time.  I have no one particular reason for not blogging.  I have certainly been busy with family matters.  I also went south for spring break this year for the first time.  I have been busy with different things, but not so much with the blogging.  I suppose if I were more organized  I would have had some guest posts, or I would have had enough posts put together that I could schedule them in advance so they would appear at the right time.  I could also make better use of links to other people's blogs and other items in the media and in the news.

Interest Levels
So here's the thing - I enjoy doing my own thing but I also feel a need to help others and share what I have learned.  We all need purpose in our lives.  Lately, however, I have been feeling that I don't really know how much I am actually helping other people with this blog.  I also run an investing club, and I have to say, I'm getting less than a great response there, also - not a whole lot of interest, of late.

Consistency
When I look at the reasons why that might be the case I think it probably boils down to one thing in particular and that would be a lack of consistent results.  If I could consistently show money coming in from month to month, no matter what, and have a track record to prove it, then, I think, people would be a little more interested in learning the ins and outs of how to do the same.

What To Do?
Why do I even care?  I care on a number of different levels, but mostly I go back to a discussion I had with an old friend at a car dealership, of all places.  I was waiting for my car to be serviced, as was he.  We got talking about the downturn caused by the credit crisis and what is now being called the Great Recession.  He was lamenting the amount of money that his portfolio was losing.  In fact, he said he was pretty much afraid to look at his statements because he didn't really want to know just how much money he had lost.  At one point, he turned and asked me, "What else is a person supposed to do?"

DI4Y?
I felt like I had an answer to his question.  My suggestion would be for him to become more of a do-it-yourself kind of investor.  In my experience, the financial services industry is out to make themselves as much money as possible.  When it comes to making us anything, in return, its really not a concern of theirs.  However, given the lack of a  bullet-proof, step by step approach I could offer, I had to agree with him.

Market Direction
Last year, I started to revisit my methodology and to do some additional research in what I know to work.  Looking back, now, I think the main reason I've found for the inconsistencies which I sometimes experience in my own approach is not paying enough attention to the direction of the market.  While there's different ways of determining the direction of the market, whether it's up, down, or sideways, getting that right is the first step.

Duh!
Having done that, the biggest thing which I've learned from my research over the past several months is that one needs to be investing consistently in that market direction.  To try to make money betting against the market, no matter how good the opportunity seems, creates inconsistent results in my returns.  It may seem to many as a no-brainer, but it is the largest factor which explains the variance in my results, to date.  I'm convinced it is the one change that will allow me to improve going forward.  Whether or not I'm right, I have to say that the results always end up speaking for themselves.

New Start
I am going to reset my monthly stats at this point in time, and we will start all over again at zero from the point that I make my next investment and going forward.  These investments will be the same ones we make with the money in the investing club of which I am a member.  It is a new start/beginning and I would invite you to follow along with me as I put my latest improvements to the test.

Care to share something with others you have learned about the markets during the past year?

The January Effect

Volume?
In this video, Jim Cramer explains the rapid rise in market indexes this January.  He thinks it has largely been caused by fund managers trying to keep up with the market averages.  I would agree.  There has also been much said in the media about the amount of cash on the sidelines, and the return of retail investors to the markets.  Don't be fooled, my research still shows a declining average volume for the major markets, and mostly, less than average trading volumes.

The Coyote Affect
The media has made much of these "historic" advances.  Myself, when I see the markets disregard the drop we saw in U.S. GDP numbers on Wednesday, I begin to watch for the coyote affect (ala the Roadrunner Show, when the coyote suddenly finds himself walking on thin air with nowhere to go but down).

Seasonality
Cramer talks about the potential "buying panic" in technology stocks caused by good earnings reports.  What he doesn't say is the earnings estimates have been set relatively low, and the seasonality clock has already run out for technology stocks for the beginning of this year.  

Caution Required
Me, I use charts to tell me where the market is at, and what I am seeing at every level is a market that is largely over-bought, for all the reasons Cramer mentioned.  Unlike Cramer, I take my cue from the charts, and while the markets may continue higher from here, they are signalling a cautious approach in the short term.  He may think we are in for a brief pause, but only time, and the charts, will tell for sure.

What charts, if any, do you use?