One of the main pitfalls of investing is searching for the approach that gets it right all the time. If investors think they can consistently rack up profits month after month, they are not living in the real world.
As an intelligent investor, I’m sure you’re not searching for such an approach because it’s not out there. Nor will there ever be one that can make money on a consistent basis without having some sort of drawdown.
If you know of any investor searching for such an approach who truly believes that someone out there really has the Holy Grail of consistent profits, I suggest that you have him or her pay a visit to Butner, North Carolina. That’s where one will find prisoner #61727-054, Bernie Madoff.
Bernie Madoff.: Prisoner #61727-054
Madoff operated what is considered to be the largest financial fraud in U.S. history. Over a period of 20-plus years he swindled thousands of investors (many of them sophisticated investors and very successful celebrities) out of $65 billion.
He didn’t do it by promising 1,000% returns. Instead, he executed his plan by fabricating a track record that was consistent and barely showed any down periods. He sold his investors on the ability to consistently, through every type of market environment, produce winning months for long periods of time.
In fact, he reported only four losing months over 14 years! Intelligent and sophisticated investors wanted to believe it was possible. They wanted to believe someone had discovered a strategy that produced gains month after month. Along with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, there’s no such thing.
Consistency is something I can’t promise. At times our approach will be totally out of sync with the market. The stocks we buy will go down, and the stocks we sell will continue to go higher. That’s normal and nothing to get excited about. The only thing I can guarantee you is that, over the long term, there will be periods of disappointment.
This separates us and our clients from those investors who bounce around from one approach to another when the approach they’re using goes through a rough period. Instead of building their net worth, they actively do everything possible to continuously lose money.
For an investing approach to be considered sound, it needs to be based on sound logic, be simple to apply and have an excellent track record.
Many approaches might be based on sound logic and have excellent records but are almost impossible to replicate. Other approaches might be simple to apply and have excellent records over the short term but are not based on sound logic; eventually they disappoint and ultimately fail.
For those who stick with an approach like the one we use in Hidden Values Alert – one that is based on logic, is simple to apply and has an excellent track record – the world is their oyster.
