Cooking up a Storm
The current controversy surrounding Townsville based financial planning group, Storm Financial Group, should serve as a wake up call to ALL Australian investors – not only those that invested through the use of Storm’s highly geared, and ill-advised strategy, but everyone involved in the stock market. Storm’s plight needs to serve as a wake up […]
General Market Overview
It’s now been two weeks since SPA3 generated a Low Market Risk signal on the Australian market . For users of the SPA3 system this indicates they can increase their position sizing for new buy signals on individual stocks. However, there are absolutely no guarantees that the market will remain low risk, and may indeed […]
Re-training the mind for Active Investment Success Part 2
The trading errors I mentioned last week are all the manifestation of poor trading psychology. After making such errors, a trader with this poor trading psychology would typically blame a third party for their trading errors. This may be their broker, a newsletter, the market, their software, their job because they were to busy at […]
Re-training the mind for Active Investment Success Part 1
This week I have extracted a section from the SPA3 reference manual which focuses on building the critical skills to re-train your mind for better Active Investment. Many of you will be able to relate to the thoughts and feelings derived from the market at a theoretical level but may not know how to actually […]
Taking Responsibility for your Investments
One of the major lessons we can take from the 2008 bear market is the need to take responsibility for the management of our money, investments and general financial well-being. The issue with bull markets, and extended ones in particular, is that they breed complacency. Investors become complacent in their approach to the markets and […]
Reflections on 2008 and a plan for 2009
2008 will long be remembered by traders and investors alike for a variety of reasons, both good and bad. For the educated and prepared ones 2008 either turned out relatively OK if they reduced the exposure of their long positions and went mainly to cash, or for a small percentage, absolutely wonderful if they were […]
The Death of the ‘Buy & Hold’ Investor!
As this will be my last posting for 2008, I would like to express my thanks to all of you who have read and contributed to my blog. This was a new venture for me, and I am pleased to say it has been great fun and very successful. We have had in excess of […]
Executing with a Trader’s Mindset
The many comments and questions our company has received over the past few months as equity markets have been massively sold off and some portfolios have suffered significant drawdowns leads me to this week’s topic on trading and investing from the market’s perspective, that is, becoming empathetic with the market. I have discussed aspects of […]
Benefits of Hedging a Portfolio
Last week I discussed SPA3 risk profiles and the differing effects that each have on overall portfolio performance. This week I’d like to discuss the benefits of using a hedging strategy to offset potential losses from a long only, medium-term equity trading strategy such as SPA3. When I set about designing and developing the SPA3 […]
The affect Risk Profiles have on Portfolio Performance
Last week’s post on volatility raised a number of issues about risk profiles and the levels of exposure different investors have had to the bear market we are currently experiencing. In light of the questions and comments we have received I thought that I would discuss the five SPA3 Risk Profiles and the differing effects […]