EasyBlog

It’s that time of year again. In the coming weeks, financial publications and gurus will release their hot list of stocks to buy, the best mutual funds, which sectors are going to out perform the market and which ones to avoid, and on and on. And, with all the upcoming holiday parties, I am sure to receive questions about my outlook on the market and whether it will go up or down. (Since I’ll be celebrating the holidays, I’ll simply stuff my face with a tasty morsel or down another beverage.)

Investors are driven by the innate human need for emotional and psychological security. Randomness is terrifying and creates discomfort. Investors want to believe that they or someone else knows what's going to happen next year. As such, they buy the hot lists and listen for hot tips. Some even pay substantial sums of money to those who claim to know what the future holds.

To kick start 2012, financial publications and gurus released their hot list of top stocks to buy late last year. The articles and gurus can be very persuasive. They use what sounds logical and reasonable to argue: “We know which stocks you should own to get above average returns.” And, many investors, middle class or otherwise, are inclined to act on the hot lists, as they do every year.

The average investor is led to believe that since we have wonderful technology, the Internet, and access to unlimited facts and statistics, investing is made easier and that we can research the stock tips before investing. The reality: Technology makes investing more difficult, complex, and confusing, not simpler. Can the average investor understand or even explain what all the information means?

Remember 2008-09? Those scary times forced millions of investors to get out of the stock market and hold cash or “safer” investments. Were you one of them?

As painful as those times were, how much more painful has it been for those who cashed out for “safety?” That oh-so very seductive “market timing”. (For the unschooled, market timing is any attempt to change your investment mix based on some forecast about future stock market prices and its highs or lows). Market timing is perhaps the most destructive and costliest of all investment mistakes. And, there are an endless number of so-called investment gurus who will tell you they know when to get in and out of the market.

Truth is they can’t!