RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:BY the way FTN does NOT hold USBJust over 20 years ago, I made a call into very well known and astute investor.
I really didn't expect to get through, but sometimes the stars are all aligned and.......
I was always a very conservative investor and to this day I keep between 25-40% cash in my accounts.
I used to deal through brokers, until it became obvious they were making more money on my money than I was.
Not only that, they weren't very astute and mainly relied on the stocks/bonds being promoted by their base corporation, who had often funded these companies/corporations and were selling the stocks in lieu of other payments.
Should be illegal, IMHO, but someone has to promote/sell those investments and it won't be done for free.
Anyway, back to the MSNBC guest. He charges a lot of money for any consultations, and was born into a very wealthy family is about all I will say.
I asked him how a small retail investor is supposed be able to make sense of the markets and time the buy/purchases in a relatively successful manner.
The very first part of his answer was that there are never any guarantees and not to trust any single method of getting information or intuition into any investment and to always keep a substantial cash balance, that can be used to recoup losses if necessary.
He also asked me to give my information to the call in board and stay on the line to do so after his answer on the program. I did this but didn't really expect this person to call back.
To my surprise, the very next morning at exactly 2:30am I got a land line phone call, which turned out to be the guest I had called.
He didn't want to get into this on the program, because there just wasn't enough time to justify his opinion and it would be completely contrary to popular opinions and practices. It would also cause some ripples within his circles of acquaintences.
Basicly his advice was to keep my portfolio manageable and not to rely heavily on brokers or brokerage claimed insights or promotions.
He told me to get into self directed trading, which was just starting to be offered by banks and some investment houses, IF I FELT COMFORTABLE DOING SO.
He also told me that I shouldn't have more investments in my portfolio than I could apply at least an hour or more per day/each to on a regular basis.
He advised me to study a few different investment methods for judging ''forward looking results''
I'm OK with some of them, but my usual method of getting information was off the websites of the investment, such things as PE, NAV etc.
He cautioned me that those parameters were not ''forward looking'' but historical in nature and could be deceptive.
There was a lot more but space and time ??????
Since then, I set up all of my investment accounts to be self directed, with at least a 25% cash cushion.
His other caution was never to be under the impression that any investment couldn't implode, sometimes overnight, usually becasue of investor emotion or some sort of disaster.
MY investments have appx a 70% success rate and when I purchase an investment, it's because a rigid buy price has been selected as well as a set profit sell price and a loss limit price, which has backfired on me on more than a couple of occaisions.
Hard hitting times, such as the collapse in 2008 and the 2019 inspired by Covid are extremely hard to predict for investors such as myself with very limited knowledge on the overall view.
I like to peruse this site, because of the information which can be garnered here and the mostly functional discussions between reasonable people with similar interests.
GLTA the good folks here