Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of October 15, 2014

Article Excerpt

Your surest route to investment success is to follow our three-pronged Successful Investor approach: Invest mainly in well-established, high-quality companies; Spread your money out across most if not all of the five main economic sectors: Manufacturing & Industry; Resources & Commodities; Consumer; Finance; and Utilities. Downplay or avoid stocks in the broker/media limelight. Stocks in the limelight instill bloated expectations in investors. When they fail to live up to these expectations, as is bound to happen eventually, downturns can be swift and brutal. In the long run, our three-part system will provide much better results than basing investment decisions on market opinions or predictions. Of course, I still form opinions on which way the market and individual stocks are likely to move in coming months and years. Some of these opinions fall in the category of “predictions”—others are more like guesses. From time to time I share these opinions with investors. Sometimes they turn out surprisingly accurate—other times, not so much. Still, this has been a..