Saturday, September 20, 2008
Various Investment Strategies
| Although the goal of this web page is not to proffer free advice on investing per se, there are some basic tenets and principles that any judicious investor should follow. A lot of it may seem to be obvious to most, but surprisingly enough, many people hardly adhere to what is deemed as "common sense." The smart investor is definitely one who is aware not only of the complete composition of the his/her portfolio, but also of market trends. These factors enable the investor to make an informed decision--and an informed decision is 90% of the work towards successful investing. There are several techniques used by many investors while tracking their mutual funds. The "momentum strategy" is the buying of stocks of companies whose earnings are rising. You may be wondering why anybody would buy the stocks of companies whose prices were not rising. But there is another strategy of buying the stocks of undervalued companies. This strategy "bets" that the prices of these companies are bound to rise, and with time, will do so. There is, of course, the traditional strategy of buying the mutual funds of blue-chip stocks. But, as expected, many investors buy into the mutual funds of small companies. Diversification is very important when practicing this strategy. Many investors also follow the "buy and hold" strategy. This is for the long-term investor who doesn't believe that the market changes greatly day-to-day. The momentum investors believe that buying-and-holding is too broad and non-responsive to the dynamics of the market. Important Available Resources Okay, we've thrown a lot of information your way. Do you still have many questions? Are there still uncertainties in your mind about certain things? Well, fortunately, there are several excellent guides and resources available for people to learn more about the world of mutual funds. * No-Load Fund Investor. This is monthly publication that gives investors information on 664 no-load and low-load funds. It contains information on returns, risk, asset size, and gives diversification suggestions. The No-Load Fund Investor, Inc. P.O. Box 283 Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706 (800) 252-2042 * Mutual Fund Buyer's Guide. This is a fairly inexpensive monthly publication that provides similar information as the No-Load Fund Investor and covers over 1500 funds. The Institute for Econometric Research 3471 N. Federal Fort Lauderdale, FL 33306 (800) 442-9000 * Morningstar Mutual Funds. This is an excellent detailed source of information on mutual funds. Over 1240 funds are followed and profiled regularly. Closed-end funds are also followed in a newsletter that is published. Morningstar also does corporate and private research on particular funds, charging fees for their services. Morningstar 53 West Jackson Blvd. Chicago, IL 60604 (800) 876-5005 The Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily are two other thorough resources that you may want to consider reading |
The Importance of Diversification
| We cannot overemphasize the importance of having a well balanced and diversified mutual fund portfolio. But what does this exactly mean? A total investment of between $5000 and $6000 could make your portfolio fairly diversified. Even the mutual funds themselves can be diversified in a variety of investments. The mutual funds that are better diversified tend to do better than the non-diversified funds. The same is true with your overall portfolio. In short, diversification provides insurance. Generally, mutual fund investors tend to be conservative as the graph below illustrates. But they do vary the types of invesments that they are involved with at different times in life. |