Where Have I Seen This Before?

We’ve been through this before. We’re going through it now. We’ll go through it again. It stinks, folks. I’m not going to sugarcoat it at all. It stinks to watch the market tumble hundreds of points day after day. It stinks to take a look at your portfolio and watch that value sink day after day. We find comfort in the faith that markets will recover, along with our account balances, but it still stinks.

Winning Stage Races

As an investor, it’s important to keep this in mind. You don’t have to win every month, quarter or even every year to end up on the podium wearing the Yellow Jersey. Actually, trying to keep up with the short-term winners can be counter-productive to long-term success. It’ll also burn you out.

Alternative Reality

Diversification has been called the only free lunch in investing. This idea is based on research showing that diversification, through a combination of assets like stocks and bonds, could reduce risk without reducing expected return, or could increase expected return without increasing risk compared to those individual assets alone.