Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of September 4, 2013?

Article Excerpt

Last week I pointed out that learning what not to do can be the hardest and costliest part of an investor’s education. In that issue, I focused on how this applies to technical analysis—the practice of trying to base investment decisions on past trading and market history. This week I want to expand on what I said, since the idea applies to a wide range of narrow approaches to investing. To succeed as an investor, you have to take a broad view in making investment decisions. Technical analysis and other narrow views do sometimes seem to “work” for lengthy periods, of course. But they only work for a minority of the time, and they never work consistently. Instead, they run hot and cold. As with all random events, their successes occur in bunches. These bunches of successes come in random lengths, with random beginning and end points. It’s easy to see how this applies with technical analysis, which has an…