Over the last five years the US Stock Market has been in a very strong bull market. Research has shown that individual stocks typically track the S&P 500 about 75% of the time. That means that 3 out of 4 stocks will trend with the broad market.
Suffice it to say that in a strong increasing market an investor can pretty much “throw a dart” and perform about as well as the overall market. Professional money managers contend that they know something or have an edge that the individual investor cannot replicate. I call BS!
I am passionate about encouraging individual investors to become “self-directed” investors. You might say I have a personal vendetta. I had my $250,000 Roth IRA retirement account invested with Bear Stearns in the late 1990’s. They proceeded to lose all but $13,000 and financially devastated me. I will do everything in my power to educate individual investors so that does not happen to them.
After the debacle at Bear Stearns, I set out in 2003 to learn everything I could possibly learn about investing in stocks, bonds, ETF’s and futures. Like many new investors I took my lumps, but I persevered to the point that today I am confident in what I do and what I can help others to achieve consistent, predictable returns. Ask your financial adviser if he/she can generate predictable results for you??
Individual investors are led to believe by the “self-serving” financial advice industry that it is far too complicated for you to manage your own account. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact I dare say that with a little direction and familiarity with the available technology today, in just a few short months you will know more than a large majority of the “asset gatherers” themselves.
Of course they will do their best to keep you. The total annual fees that are generated by the financial advice industry are over $600 billion….. that is with a “B”! Remember that these fees they generate don’t come out of thin air; they come out of every investment account. You may be further surprised to find that you share about 40% of your annual gains with your financial advisory firm. And you pay them win or lose!
There are many methodologies that the individual investor can employ to generate consistent, predictable returns that outperform those of the “money suckers”. The financial advice industry points too many “so called” solid trading methods to prove their point that it has to be too hard and too confusing for a “non-professional” to become proficient managing their own account.
I can assure you that armed with just a little bit of knowledge and familiarity with available technology there is no way I could perform as poorly as Bear Stearns did for me. Don’t be misled!
There are thousands of mutual funds available for the financial adviser to “sell” you. Yes, sell you, as they are handsomely paid by the mutual funds for depositing your funds. Then on top of the mutual fund loads and early termination fees your adviser charges between 1% and 2%.
What if I told you that you could place one trade per week in your self-directed account and outperform the top mutual fund since 2010! You could spend a few minutes of your time and outperform the absolutely best performing mutual fund over the past five years!
My friends at the Tastytrade Financial Network recently conducted a five year study comparing one simple credit spread trade executed every Friday against the number one mutual fund from 2010 to present. Of course the chance of your “expert” having you in the very best mutual fund for the last five years is about the same as your chance of walking on the moon.
The study compared selling a simple put spread every Friday closing it the following week. This was compared to investing $10,000 in the #1 performing mutual fund over the last 5 years. Again let me remind you how unlikely it would be for you to find your account invested in the top performing fund.
This study confirmed that the individual investor can outperform the professional “asset gatherer” that invests your account in a mutual fund. Armed with a little bit of knowledge you can spend about 5 minutes each week executing the simplest of strategies and you can materially outperform the “self-proclaimed” professionals. As the study proved, the difference for an account size of $10,000 is $27,532 (17,532 gain) versus $14,550 (4,550 gain) for the five year period. That is a difference of $12,982 in net gain! And that is only on a $10k account!
Now think about that. You spend five minutes each week executing the trade and you nearly double the performance of the top performing mutual fund for the five years 2010 through 2014. They said you couldn’t do it!
Let me share with you the results of the study:
In conclusion, I hope that you will spend some time comprehending the results of this study. Your financial existence could rely on it.
If you would like to discuss this type of strategy and the results of the study, call me at 239.272.3424. I answer my own phone!