Reblog: Common Investing Mistakes to Avoid Like the Plague


Back during my schooling years, I studied the same problem again and again so as not to make the same mistake come exam time.

Problem was, I was horrible at application.

If the exact question came out in the exam, I killed it.

But that rarely happened. The question was always worded differently and confused the heck out of me.

I screwed up similar questions time after time simply because I couldn’t adapt what I had studied to the current version of the question.

Isn’t the market like this?

You make investment mistakes and in order to make sure you get it right next time, you focus and tell yourself you won’t make the same mistake again.

But how often does the market offer the exact same situation?

Rarely.

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Reblog: The dangers of timing the markets


Traditional wisdom suggests that when it comes to investing, timing is everything. But is it?

We’ve witnessed shock after shock in the political arena over the past year, which has repeatedly jolted the markets into action.

For investors, it’s difficult to sit tight amid all this noise, and you might feel encouraged to sell out of stocks to try to protect yourself from the falls. But by selling out early, you could end up missing out on the gains.

Timing the markets is effectively a double whammy in crystal ball gazing, because not only do you have to predict the outcome of these events (and just note how shocked most of us were about the Brexit vote), but also how the markets are going to react.

Disaster domino effect

Mark Northway of Sparrows Capital says the events which have transpired over the past year have provided opportunities for fund managers to “test their mettle” and trade in and out of the turbulence.

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