Blog Purpose

Hello everyone, I am an avid market watcher and a student of fundamental and technical analysis. Investing in and talking about stocks and the stock market is a passion of mine. Although I have no formal education in it I have spent thousands of hours trying to learn how to succeed in investing.

I wanted to start this Blog to provide a free site to help people who are confused how to invest in the stock market. I was confused for years, I always had questions about what I should buy, when should I sell, where should I invest, bonds, real estate, mutual funds, stocks, small caps, big caps, mid caps, it was all so confusing. When I first started investing I'd just give my money to the professionals in the big brokerage houses, and I consistently under performed the market. I couldn't figure out why it was so difficult to make my money grow. I was successful in my own practice but my hard earned money wasn't working. I had just figured that the professionals I gave my money to knew more than I did. I was sure they used proven formulas and methods that would inevitably help me.

Well lets just say I wasn’t happy, and neither were my colleagues, almost everyone I knew wasn’t happy with their advisors. After years of frustration and watching the march up a few thousand points without me, I started subscribing to the newsletters that would flood my office. I don’t know where they found me but I used to get so many of them. I would follow their advice but I never made money, no one tells you how and when to buy and most importantly when to sell. You can’t just buy and hold. I have seen so many stocks skyrocket never knowing when to sell being almost paralyzed, and then watching all the gains disappear, so painful. Buy and hold was the theory before the Internet bubble, stock always comeback they used to say. Following expert advice, I lost a few hundred thousand dollars following.

Finally, I picked up the some investment periodicals (IBD, WSJ and Barron's), but i couldn't figure out how to use then, I read books by William O'Neil, Peter Lynch, Peter Williamson, I took courses on technical analysis, and became a full time market student, then bear market after the bubble hit that was a very confusing time but during the last six years I have beaten the major averages by double digits, one year believe it or not by triple digits (2003). I am not trying to boast, 2003 was an unusual year, lots of mutual funds did well because we were coming out of recession, 9/11 attacks, very low interest rates, home building boom for materials, so lots of folks did exceptionally well.

I believe anyone who puts in the time and effort can make good money in the market. In any case the purpose of this Blog is to eventually get other people who have an interest in the market to share ideas maybe people can be helped from making the same mistakes I made. I will get into my investment philosophy in next posts. I will say that if you have a busy business and don’t have a lot of time to follow the gyrations of the market don’t buy individual stocks go to morningstar.com and buy no-load highly rated mutual funds. I will have a section on mutual funds in the near future. Please remember I am not an investment professional nor do I claim to be. I have spent years of suffering (losses/paying high fees) to finally come to understand how The Street works and remember I am a work in progress.