Topic: How To Invest

Pat: What’s your opinion of programs offered by companies that use systems to tell you when to buy and sell stocks each week to make profits?

Article Excerpt

Automated systems that make trading decisions for you do two laborious but essentially simple things. First, they narrow down the data you use to make investment decisions. Second, they then apply some fixed rule or rules to draw a conclusion or an investment decision from that selection of data. These systems often seem to work for a time. Then they quit working, and begin pumping out unprofitable trades. This often happens when their users are most vulnerable, such as during stock-market downturns. It all comes down to a basic rule of the universe: if trading was as easy as promoters of trading systems make it out to be, why would anybody work? We still feel that you will have better long-term results if you follow our three-part system: First, invest mainly in well-established companies. When the market goes into a lengthy downturn, these stocks generally keep paying their dividends, and they are among the first to recover when conditions improve. Second, avoid or downplay…