How To Be A Better Investor

MarketWatch's Marshall Loeb Offers 4 Tips For Success

(MarketWatch)  Great investors are made, not born. They often have to learn from experience. These experiences may differ for each. But there are some common tenets that many of the great ones follow that you can use too.

From Whitney Tilsen and John Heins, contributing editors at Kiplinger's magazine, here are four tips to become a better investor:

Invest in businesses, not in stock.
Don't spend too much time pouring over the stock pages or obsessing over stock-price movements. What you should be focused on is the business fundamentals behind the stock price. Put some time into researching a company's strengths and weaknesses, how competitive it is within the industry and how it might grow in the next 10 years.

Don't go outside your comfort zone.
Many great investors, Warren Buffet included, emphasize the importance of investing in what you know. If you invest in something you understand, then you will have a better informed idea of how the company will perform in the future.

Go against the grain.
Being a successful investor requires a certain degree of independent thinking. What the consensus thinks about a company is often already baked into the stock price. If you bring some original thinking to investing, you may see something that no one else does. This can translate into success.

Don't be afraid to do nothing.
Many investors feel tempted to continually rejuggle their portfolio. This gives them the false sense that they are in control. But all that tinkering often leads to losses. Once you decide on buying a stock, you should hold it for at least several years or until the market's optimism becomes too excessive.

[wardoglrs]

Nothing to fear the Federal Reserve is here...:]

Whats that Joe...What do you mean they only look after there banks. At the expense of the dumb downed tax payers

[variant_530]

whitemale08 --
1.than not then
2.buy low sell high

[drivelphobe]

The primary thing to do is go one your own and get away from the "stock broker", another name for thief, hustler, con man etc! These people are the lowest form of life, beguiling clients to listen to their manipulations which create income for the broker first, then you if there''s some luck. They survive on transaction fees, which means they frighten, bully or intimidate one into changing positions as fast and as often as they can. This is rarely in your interest at all and it''s accidental if you benefit.

You don''t need these people. They propose stocks for purchase based on sales contests, additional bonuses and self-interest. Go on your own and save thousands in fees and make your own way. It requires some research, but it''s not rocket science. Most brokers are not that smart, just manipulative.

[whitemale08]

All of this advice is nonsense right now.

We are going through something worse then a recession, it''s worse then a depression.

This the greatest financial crisis since the 1600''s onset of the Dark Ages.

There is no place to invest because the financial system is coming down all of it. Anybody who understands Austrian economics and not this Keynesian garbage you learn in college will tell you that.

Do not invest anything in paper Federal Reserve Notes because the so called "dollar" is crashing forever no recovery folks.

Your best bet is Gold and Silver, but after it''s all said and done, you can''t eat gold or silver in a non-agrerian post-industrial obliterated society.

Be prepared to hunt rats, and cats and dogs like in Asia.