Lots of Sturm und Drang but Not Much To Show For It

Naturally I'm kicking myself for not hanging tough on my high beta shorts. Actually I'm not really. I wish I had them. They would have been killing it. But I had to cover because you just don't know how high a market can go.

What it does is confirm how close I am to making the big score.  If I keep it up, one day I am going to nail it and make the mullah.

It feels as though the market has been going nuts, but the averages are only off a little bit (actually the S&P is still up over a 1% for the year, Naz off 2.2%). Let's hope it doesn't implode upon itself because although there has been plenty of noise thusfar the damage hasn't been all the bad (unless you own the momo guys).

There Is No Single Best Solution, But...

There is no single best investment strategy, approach, philosophy, solution. There is no unified theory of investment management.

For long term investing, there are however a few simple things you can do to increase the chance of positive outcomes.

Get on the right side of secular trends, ie. exposure to growth, increasing productivity, rising earnings/free cash flows. One important factor is the valuation level you enter at. Secondary factors are short-medium term momentum and longer term mean reversion facilitations.

Have a underlying philosophy that takes out some of the more common errors or mistakes, ie. thinking you can consistently time the market, choose the best manager, or make the right stock picks. Passive, low cost, equal weighted exposure to global growth factors.

Have the humility to realize that you don't know it all and that you won't always get it right, therefore have a disciplined downside risk management framework that either includes strict stop loss limits and/or non-correlated asymmetric downside protection.