In addition, Pat thinks then beginner investors should cultivate two important qualities: a healthy sense of skepticism and patience.
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Investors should approach all investments with a healthy sense of skepticism. This can help keep you out of fraudulent stocks that masquerade as high-quality stocks. It will also keep you out of legally operated, but poorly managed, companies that promise more than they can possibly deliver.
If you are a new investor, you should also realize that losing patience can cause you to sell your best choices right before a big rise. All too often, investors buy a promising stock just as it enters a period of price stagnation. Even the best-performing stocks run into these unpredictable phases from time to time. They move mainly sideways in a wide range for months or years before their next big rise begins. (Stock brokers often refer to these stocks as “dead money.”)
If you lack patience, you run a big risk of selling your best choices in the midst of one of these phases, prior to the next big move upward. If you lose patience and sell, you are particularly likely to do so in the low end of the trading range, when stock prices have weakened and confidence in the stock has waned.
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This portfolio is a good starting point for investors who need income. It’s also a starting point for conservative investors, since regular dividends are an indicator of investment quality.
The managers believe that investment markets follow these seasonal trends and so have “seasonal rhythms.” Some of these patterns occur over the course of weeks or months; others last only a few days. According to its sales literature, by rotating a portfolio in reaction to these seasonal patterns, a “well-informed investor can realize returns that are superior to a static investment in broader markets and sector markets.”
As you’ve heard us say before, growth by acquisition adds risk, especially with purchases as big as Avast—and Gen Digital’s most-recent purchase, MoneyLion. That new business focuses on digital banking, consumer lending and other financial products.