Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat's commentary for the week of April 4, 2012?

Article Excerpt

When it comes to adding value to your investing efforts, one of the least productive things you can do is to try to “time” the market. By that, I mean attempting to sell good stocks at what looks to you like a price peak, in hopes of buying them back at lower prices. One of the hardest things about successful investing is that it’s easy to form a strong opinion on the market’s next price trend, and then find the market does something totally different from what you expected. That’s why you want to confine your buying mostly, if not entirely, to high-quality stocks. They tend to hold on to their value over long periods. Sometimes your strong opinions will turn out right. Other times, you’ll sell at what looks like a high price, only to find that some new information comes along that spurs the stock to much higher prices. Sometimes, you’ll sell a stock that looks “high,” then use the…