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"If I can do it, it isn't art"
How many times have we heard that one while going through our local art museum? A few splats of paint on some canvas, and its worth millions. We look down our noses at so called artists for creating pieces that we could create. However, when it comes to investing, we tend to puff our chests out and walk with a spring in our step when we have picked stocks that equaled or barely beaten some of the investing professionals. Furthermore, if we do better than 60% of everyone else, we elevate ourselves to lofty heights reserved for deity.
Please.
We have one benchmark to compare ourselves to, and that is the market itself. The majority of the population can't even equal the market returns, let alone beat it, but we always keep telling ourselves we can. You got to admire the effort and optimism.
At this time, I have only one stock, Pfizer, that I have bought with the hopes of it going up. Everything else is in ProShares short and ultra short ETFs. In fact, I am going to put the rest of my money in more Ultra Short ETFs this morning. Why?
I base my strategy on knowing that I know next to nothing. Either the market is going to go up in the next 6 months, or it is going to go down. My bet is that it is going down. I base this not on sophisticated quant models, dangerous looking yield curves, contrarian principles, P/E Ratios, and the like. I base it on history.
Bull markets and bear markets are cyclical. We don't know if we have entered the bear market yet, but if we haven't, it is close. I don't say so, history says so. Bull markets only last so long. Just because we may have missed the true market top or the true market bottom, it doesn't mean we missed the time to make good money. If the market topped out a month ago, then we still have time to short the market and ride the wave. If the market still hasn't topped, what have we lost when it does top no more than 6-8 months from now?
My money is in the short ETFs. History is on my side. Market psychology be damned.
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