Article Surfing Archive

People have often asked me how I always pick stocks that end up with 20% gains in a couple of months or triple-digit gains in a year. They ask me is it luck? Maybe with a couple of stocks it may have been luck, but luck doesn't play a role in buying ten or more stocks in the same year that earn more than 80% returns. The key is not to follow the herd, stop listening to the investment talking heads, and to learn an investment system and then be unwaveringly courageous in applying your system. There have been times family and friends have asked me for advice, and I have told them, "Buy this stock. I guarantee you, you will not lose money."

Now I know that there are no guarantees in the stock market, but if you follow certain strategies, you can be 90% sure that the stock will appreciate. With this particular agricultural stock, it was almost the perfect stock, and I was 99.9% sure that the stock would produce monumental gains. Sure enough, the stock exploded almost 130% higher in about a year. And this stock was not some risky penny stock trading at less than a dollar a share. This stock was trading at about $70 a share at the time I advised my friends to buy it. So below are the 10 surefire rules I employ to build enormous gains in investment portfolios.

(1)Buy When Fear is Rampant, Sell When Mania is the Greatest

Every investing course should be accompanied by a psychology course as well. The most difficult thing to do in investing is to buy more when fear and panic is rampant and to sell when mania is the highest. Stock markets and asset classes cycle in peaks and troughs. Most people will not buy stocks until after stocks are plastered all over the news and after they have just risen by 30%, 40%, 50% or more, believing that they will rise higher forever. Buying at the troughs when nobody is talking about a stock or during steep corrections provides a low-risk, \high-reward setup for your portfolio.

(2)Learn What Your Neighbor is Doing, Watch Investment Shows on MSNBC and Bloomberg on TV, Listen to the Recommendations of Your Financial Consultant ' Then Make Sure that You Don't Have a Single Thing in Common With Their Strategies

If you are one of the thundering sheep herd and perpetually follow the mindless actions of others, you are virtually guaranteed to lose money or forever relegate your portfolio to average to below-average returns. The surest way to build an investment fortune is to buy asset classes and stocks when nobody is discussing them and to sell them when everyone is talking about them. This requires a nose for market timing. Is market timing impossible as all the global investment firms always tell you? Hardly. Learning what asset classes and individual stocks are poised to skyrocket every year just takes a little bit of time, but is really not that difficult. Since time is a commodity that Private Wealth Mangers and Financial Consultants employed by large commercial investment houses lack, they tell you that market timing is impossible merely because they don't have the time to perform the necessary research.

However, purchasing stocks that are likely close to cyclical bottoms instead of believing that market timing is impossible and indiscriminately buying stocks will easily add another 10% in returns to your portfolio per year. Do you really believe that you can make a fortune by buying any stock that is advertised on a TV program watched by millions of investors worldwide? Ultimately, if you own the same stocks as your neighbor to the right, your neighbor to the left, the talking head on TV, and the talking head at your commercial investment firm, then are doing something the proper things to build an investment fortune.

If you don't seek out stocks and asset classes at times when nobody is considering them, you will never make serious money in investing. You may make 10% a year or maybe even 15% a year but if you want to enter the world of the big boys and earn 25% or more in annual returns, you have to dig a lot deeper than your investment peers. Just a couple of months ago (June 25, 2007) this email landed in my inbox from a big investment newsletter publisher. 'Over the past week, I've crisscrossed northwestern Canada looking for the next great investment. I'm up here to find out what everyone's invested in. And after attending an investment conference in Vancouver last week, I can tell you absolutely that no one is interested in gold'Base and minor metals will continue to be the best place to have your money over the next few years. Gold, as a virtually useless metal that has few industrial uses, appears to have hit its peak and could be running sideways for years like it has many times in the past.'

Then, in August, when the HUI (the major AMEX gold index) took a sharp hit in response to global market corrections, everyone proclaimed that gold was no longer a safe haven and that gold was 'done'. Now, just a one-month later, on September 26, 2007, a lot of people are talking about gold's strong rapid surge. So was the newsletter that ended up in my mailbox that proclaimed gold as dead in June right in June but terribly wrong in September? The answer is neither. The only person that is wrong is you if you blindly listen to talking heads that end up in your inbox or that you watch on TV. The fact is that little-discussed asset classes and stocks are ignored because perhaps 1 out of 1000 investors truly understand them, and even the ones that parade as experts on TV have been more terribly wrong about their calls than right. So it's up to you to get off your proverbial bum and learn how to invest for yourself. Chasing stocks higher and buying when everyone else is speaking about them is a sure way to lose money. And so is listening to talking heads. Learn a system that teaches you to buy assets when everyone is ignoring them and you'll outperform everyone else.

(3)Concentrate, Don't Diversify

If you've read the paragraph above, you already realize that Private Wealth Managers and Financial Consultants are in short supply of time as they partake in the race to gather as many assets as possible for their respective firms. Thus, this is the reason they employ the rule of diversification for your portfolio. U.S. Navy SEALs will tell you that during an operation exfil exercise, the easiest way out is rarely the safest way out. The same holds true in investing, yet diversification is by far and away, the easiest investment strategy that anyone could possibly teach to tens of thousands of financial consultants. Certainly, diversification cannot be a complex strategy if tens of thousand consultants from varied backgrounds and industries can all efficiently apply this concept to their clients' portfolios with very little training. Diversification is the biggest cop-out investment strategy of all time. It screams of incompetence and lack of skill ' 'I have no idea what asset classes are going to perform well this year so I'm going to invest you in everything under the sun.'

Assume everyday, a NBA coach looked at his active roster of 12 players and said, 'I have no idea who are the best players. Because I don't know, and don't care to take the time to figure it out, I'm going to ensure that all 12 players share equal time every game.' This coach is unlikely to win many games versus the coach that takes the time in training camp to assess who his best 5 players are and then consequently plays these 5 players the majority of minutes during every game. This is the difference between diversification and concentration. The coach that diversifies may win some games based upon pure luck because maybe he has a couple great players that can make up for the deficiencies of the poor players he puts on the court every night. Still, most nights, the deficiencies of the poor players will drag down the performance of the excellent players.

However, the coach that concentrates and puts his best players on the court every night will be able to field a team every night that has an excellent chance of winning. This is why we concentrate in investing. To give us the best possible chance of winning. Diversification will never achieve this.Study the best investors in the world. The best investors in the world always manage their own money and they concentrate their portfolios in the best asset classes every year. Don't believe the hype about diversification ' diversification stinks, it doesn't protect your portfolio, and it certainly will never make you wealthy.

(4)Learn Everything You Can About the Relationship Between Politics and Stocks

On September 18, 2007, the U.S. Federal Reserve cut the Federal Funds Rate (the rates banks borrow from each other and the rates the rates banks loan to customers) by 50 basis points. The U.S. stock markets soared that day, followed by strong surges in Asian markets the following morning. The interest rate cut undoubtedly was not just motivated by a desire to manufacture stability and confidence in the U.S. economy, but also motivated by politics. If you don't \understand what I mean by this, then you have homework to do.

Governments and corporations in every major global economy in the world have formed relationships that have since been coined as 'corporatocracies'. Politics has a major hand in all of the following: interest rate cuts, interest rate increases, the price of oil, the price of gold, the valuation of the Euro, the valuation of the dollar, the valuation of the Pound Sterling, permits to mine uranium in Australia, defense spending for national security, decisions to go to war, and contracts awarded to corporations. If you don't understand politics, you cannot possibly understand global macro-economic trends and what asset classes and stocks offer the best low-risk, high-reward opportunities year after year. The lack of understanding of politics is what causes Chief Investment Officers of major commercial investment houses to make poor calls in the direction of commodity prices and the direction of global economies. Understand politics and your investment returns should increase tremendously.

(5)Learn Everything You Can About Gold as an Investment.

Gold, as an investment, is perhaps the most misunderstood and poorest understood asset class in the world. Some people believe that the physical commodity is the only way to invest in this asset, and as such, only put money into the paper gold ETFs. Other people that invest in gold stocks don't understand the differences in price behavior between the juniors and majors; explorers, developers, and producers; hedged and unhedged companies; and the political risk of operating in different countries. Therefore, they never understand the risk-reward quotient of their gold portfolio, sell out during steep corrections, always lose money, and think that gold investments are speculative and stink. Furthermore, they don't understand that short-term manipulation of prices of the underlying commodity and stocks can't change the long-term outlook and performance. However, learn how to buy and sell this asset class properly and you will be rewarded as no other asset class can reward you

Article continued under same title, part II. To read the rest of the article, merely perform a search for "10 Surefire Ways to Make an Investment Fortune, Part II) or visit us at http://www.theundergroundinvestor.com