The way stocks react to significant price shocks is important for finding good entry and exit points. A common question traders and investors ask themselves is whether to purchase after a stock takes a big fall on a bad earnings report, for example.

If we’re to believe the efficient market hypothesis then the shocked stocks price is reflective of all new information so wouldn’t warrant a purchase (based solely on the price shock.) However, if there are exceptions to the EMH, or if it takes time for the price to reach it’s EMH point, then there is value in studying reactions to price shocks.

In this article we’ll study how stocks recover from various levels of price drops in one day. This will help us understand if there is any advantage to purchasing directly after one of these events.

Analysis Setup

The data was based off a group of randomly selected days from the years 2004, 2005 and 2006. The next few days afterwards were then analyzed to build the statistics below.

Stock price was restricted to those above $1. This was done because penny stocks are very volatile and could skew the data. Studying penny stocks is very interesting as well, but a separate concern.

Stock volume was restricted to those above 25,000 on a daily basis. Again, this was done to prevent skews in the data. Low-volume stocks behave differently than larger volume ones.

Buckets were created for easier representation and analysis, based on the amount of the initial price shock. The buckets were chosen as 1-5% drop, 5-10%, 10-20%, and an extra one for all stocks as a comparison.

Note: The selection of the years 2004, 2005 and 2006 as the period for the test has implications we should expect up-front. The market during this period was generally considered bullish we should expect somewhat different results were we to analyze a bearish period.

Tracking price high after the drop

The first part of the analysis was to examine the price highs achieved several days after a significant downward price shock. We’ll check the performance of the stocks in each bucket for several days after the drop.

Here are the average price highs achieved by each bucket 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 days after the initial drop compared to the close on the drop day:

• All stocks: 2%, 1.5%, 1.0%, 1.4%, 1.5%
• 1-5% drop: 2.1%, 1.9%, 1.5%, 1.6%, 1.8%
• 5-10% drop: 3.8%, 3.2%, 2.3%, 2.4%, 2.5%
• 10-20% drop: 4.2%, 3.5%, 7.1%, 6.8%, 9.4%

Analysis

First of all, there are no negative values because we’re looking at the highs. It would be very rare for a stocks highest trade price to never reach it’s close on the previous day, especially during a generally bullish market.

The stark contrast between the 10-20% bucket vs. the others is very surprising. All other categories have a negatively-sloped line but 10-20% has a significant positive slope. If we carried this out further than 5 days we can assume it would achieve a similar slope to the other categories.

Why the swift partial recovery for 10-20%? One point to note is that of all the stocks found in this category their average drop on that initial day was about 12%. We then see them reach an average daily price high of about 9.5% higher than the close on the day of the drop, so that’s about an 80% recovery. One explanation is that often after a large downwards price shock the value investors will come in and start buying at the lower price.

Now, it’s definitely debatable whether analyzing the daily price highs is representative of the true recovery of a stock, so we’ll look at the daily closes next. The highs may be more applicable to active traders, rather than investors.

Tracking price close after the drop

Here are the average price closes by each bucket 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 days after the initial drop compared to the close on the drop day:

• All stocks: 0.2%, -0.2%, -0.5%, 0.0%, 0.1%
• 1-5% drop: 0.15%, -0.1%, -0.5%, -0.15%, 0.0%
• 5-10% drop: 0.1%, -0.5%, -0.9%, -0.7%, -0.7%
• 10-20% drop: -0.4%, -0.7%, 2.6%, 2.5%, 5.9%

Analysis

The only surprise here is that the 5-10% group dropped more than the 1-5% group. This is a bit counter-intuitive since naturally the 5-10% group has more room for recovery. However, it’s definitely feasible that the reasons for the price drops in the different categories would be different. This would obviously affect how willing investors are to pick up the stock after the drop.

Conclusion

The apparently significant ability for a stocks price to recover after a large downward price shock could be a useful addition to the selection process. Keep it in mind when a strong stock takes a bit hit as the market may be emotionally over-reacting to bad news.

Since the price highs, rather than closes, rebounded much more for the 5-10% and 10-20% drop buckets, compared to all stocks, active investors or traders would probably be more likely to take advantage than the average person.

Neil Thier – http://www.marketfilters.com

Neil is a founding member of MarketFilters.com, an innovative technical analysis tool. We offer easy and powerful scanning and filtering of stocks, back-testing, watch lists, and other tools.

Penny stocks also referred to as small caps, micro caps and nano caps are low-priced issues, often highly speculative and selling less than $1 a share. Initially penny stocks were mostly a matter of derision but gradually over the years some of them have developed into investment caliber issues. ?Penny stock is a high-risk stock that has a short or erratic history of revenues and earnings.?

A broader definition of penny stocks refers to the company?s market capitalization instead of its stock price. Market capitalization of a company is calculated by multiplying it stock price by the amount of shares outstanding. This number provides you with the total dollar value of all the shares in the organization at that instance of time.

A case in point can be Microsoft that has a market cap of around $300B and Dell that has a market cap of $70B. The classification of a company in small cap depends on the concerned broker. While for some organizations companies below $2b in market cap are considered to be small cap, for several others, small cap companies will only be under $1B.

Penny stocks have a great significance in the life of investors. With the help of penny stocks investors can incur huge gains in very short period of time as small as minutes and hours. Though the volatile market of penny stocks has many drawbacks yet the outweighing positive point is that investors can incur hefty benefits in nit just few days but in few hours.

Penny stocks are more enticing due to their cost-effectiveness. Unlike blue chip stocks the penny stocks demand less investment that can go a lot farther. For instance accumulating 10,000 shares of a penny stock can cost only $1000 dollars while same number of shares in a blue chip might cost as much as $10,000,000. Similarly penny stocks offer the advantage of occupying a large position in a company for minimum amount of money. For example a $5000 investment in a blue-chip company will provide the investor only a negligible share in the overall company whereas the same amount invested in penny stocks will offer you a complete 1% stake in the public company. Moreover if over the year that company expands and grows successful, your profits and shares can simply multiply.

However penny stocks too have quite a few shortcomings. The foremost disadvantage as is the volatility of the market. If on the one hand the volatility is beneficial for the investor on the other hand it can be fatal too. Investors can incur huge losses if the market fluctuates in an unwanted way. Due to the high-risk factor involved many investors completely stay away from investing in penny stocks and few others invest only a small amount of money in it.

Another drawback is that unlike stocks such as NYSE or NASDAQ, listed on more global exchanges, penny stocks have less financial disclosure requirements and release less reliable financial information in comparison to its other big counterparts. Moreover lack of easily accessible and trustworthy information about these companies provides space for temporary establishment of sham companies that can deceit and harm the investors.

Mansi Aggarwal recommends that you visit Penny Stock Research for more information.

Whether the market is exploding higher, diving or just treading water, traders tend to be nervous about the action in the next day, week or month. A bit of anxiety comes with the territory.

One indication that the market is getting into nervous territory is the tendency for traders to jump in and out of high-flying stocks while spending most of their time parked in less volatile issues or cash. It?s called ?rotation.?

When markets are stuck in a funk, chances are good for managers to sell something and simply go to cash. But when the market is like this, they don’t want to miss anything even though they are nervous about the overall market. So they very often sell something and buy something else.

We find evidence by looking at the smaller cap issues. On a day when the big guys are getting cracked over the head, often we see the small issues pick up a few points. That means they don’t want to take their money home, so to speak. They want to stay fully invested, but they don’t want to get killed if something goes wrong.

Have you noticed how analysts do some very interesting things when the market is running full tilt? Sure, they will come out on the high flyers, but you will also see them upgrade paper stocks and energy. There is a reason for that. They want those safer havens looking attractive as they rotate money out of extremely overextended stocks and into something else that has a chance of making even more. If the coast is still clear in a day or two, they can come back into a high flyer for hopefully more short-run profits.

For our money, we?d follow the same type of management style also. If you see the NASDAQ futures down a ton in the morning, consider doing what the Street will do–take some profits out of your big gainers and put them into smaller cap stocks or even safety stocks for a day or so. Chances are good the big guys will be doing the same, and the smaller issues have a good shot at moving up.

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We learnt the following the hard way! If any of these things applies to you, don’t worry ? there is an easy solution!

MISTAKE ONE

Lack of Knowledge and No Plan

It amazes us that some people expect to trade the stock market successfully without any effort. Yet if they want to take up golf, for example, they will happily take some lessons or at least read a book before heading out onto the course.

The stock market is not the place for the ill informed. But learning what you need is straightforward ? you just need someone to show you the way.

The opposite extreme of this is those traders who spend their life looking for the Holy Grail of trading! Been there, done that!

The truth is, there is no Holy Grail. But the good news is that you don’t need it. Our trading system is highly successful, easy to learn and low risk.

MISTAKE TWO

Unrealistic Expectations

Many novice traders expect to make a gazillion dollars by next Thursday. Or they start to write out their resignation letter before they have even placed their first trade!

Now, don’t get us wrong. The stock market can be a great way to replace your current income and for creating wealth but it does require time. Not a lot, but some.

So don’t tell your boss where to put his job, just yet!

Other beginners think that trading can be 100% accurate all the time. Of course this is unrealistic. But the best thing is that with our methods you only need to get 50-60% of your trades right to be successful and highly profitable.

MISTAKE THREE

Listening to Others

When traders first start out they often feel like they know nothing and that everyone else has the answers. So they listen to all the news reports and so called experts and get totally confused.

And they take tips from their buddy, who got it from some cab driver?

We will show you how you can get to know everything you need to know and so never have to listen to anyone else, ever again!

MISTAKE FOUR

Getting in the Way

By this we mean letting your ego or your emotions get in the way of doing what you know you need to do.

When you first start to trade it is very difficult to control your emotions. Fear and greed can be overwhelming. Lack of discipline; lack of patience and over confidence are just some of the other problems that we all face.

It is critical you understand how to control this side of trading. There is also one other key that almost no one seems to talk about. But more on this another time!

MISTAKE FIVE

Poor Money Management

It never ceases to amaze us how many traders don’t understand the critical nature of money management and the related area of risk management.

This is a critical aspect of trading. If you don’t get this right you not only won’t be successful, you won’t survive!

Fortunately, it is not complex to address and the simple steps we can show you will ensure that you don’t blow up and that you get to keep your profits.

MISTAKE SIX

Only Trading Market in One Direction

Most new traders only learn how to trade a rising market. And very few traders know really good strategies for trading in a falling market.

If you don’t learn to trade both sides of the market, you are drastically limiting the number of trades you can take. And this limits the amount of money you can make.

We can show you a simple strategy that allows you to profit when stocks fall.

MISTAKE SEVEN

Overtrading

Most traders new to trading feel they have to be in the market all the time to make any real money. And they see trading opportunities when they’re not even there (we?ve been there too).

We can show you simple techniques that ensure you only pull the trigger when you should. And how trading less can actually make you more!

David Chandler

For free mini-course on stock and options trading click the following link:

http://www.StockMarketGenie.com

Or visit our blog at: http://stockmarketgenie.blogspot.com/

Ordinary People Making Extraordinary Profits!

The above comments are offered for educational purposes only. We are not providing you with financial advice. We are simply sharing with you what has and hasn’t worked for us personally. If you wish to trade or invest in the stock market you should obtain advice from a registered licensed advisor.

Discount stock brokers are the most common type of brokers but there are other brokers like full service brokers and money managers.

Just about thirty years ago there were only full service stock brokers, offering order execution and investment advice at extremely high costs. Then the first discount brokers came in with low fees just for trade execution. They gained market share pretty quickly because many investors were making their own investment decisions and were just looking for cheap order execution at the stock exchange.

The trend continued with the help of the computer technology and the invention if the Internet. Today online discount brokers are huge companies in a multi billion dollar industry. Order execution by phone got rare. Now self-educated investors and traders get highly sophisticated trading platforms from their stock brokers at no additional costs.

These software trading platforms offer everything from instant order execution at all US stock exchanges to real time quotes, news and charts. Even advanced technical analysis is available today at minimal costs. Transaction costs came down so much that they are not really an issue anymore. Only day traders who do sometimes up to several hundred trades a day have to watch their trading costs.

The full service broker is still an option for many. If you don’t have the time to watch quotes and read the news all time then you may want to have somebody who does this for you. This is where the full service broker comes into play. He offers personal service and attention, takes care of your financial planning, gives you investment advice, discusses all trading decisions with you and executes the trades for you. All these at a higher price of course.

If you don’t even want to bother which stocks to buy and why, then the money manager is your choice. He makes all the decisions for you and just reports to you what has happened.

The online discount brokers can also be divided into three groups. The first one is the classic discount broker which offers extremely cheap order execution through a simple and easy to use software platform. The second type of discount broker offers additional services upon request, for instance phone orders at extra costs or access to research information.

The third type of online discount broker targets professional private or institutional traders who need advanced order execution and direct access to different markets and order routing ways. They give you the option to choose between dozens of order routing ways and order types to improve the order execution speed or quantity.

No matter what broker you want to use, he should be member of the SIPC in the case the discount stock broker gets into financial problems. Then your account is insured up to $500,000.-

David A. Sorenger is a stock market expert and provides detailed information on online discount stock brokers at his web site http://www.StockTradingABC.com.

Every day I hear from the ?experts? on CNBC-TV and the radio gurus that the way to buy stocks is find value. One man?s Rembrandt is another man?s connect-the-dots and fill in the spaces. Valuation is like beauty. It is in the mind of the beholder.

If valuation is the key to buying stocks then there should be some kind of a formula to determine what is undervalued and over-valued. In every industry there are formulas for standards of performance. For cars we want to know the zero to 60 miles per hour in how many seconds. For soap we want it to be 99 and 44/100 percent pure. For alcoholic beverages it could be how long it has been aged. And on and on.

Yet in the stock market we have no hard and fast set of rules by which to judge a company performance. Ah, and there?s the rub! No matter how good a company performance might be it may have no bearing on the price performance of the stock. You can find good companies that are within a sector that is doing poorly and yet one company can be making huge profits and sales, but the stock price is going nowhere. There need not be any correlation.

When you are in a bull market almost every stock goes up ? even the dogs. When you are in a bear market almost every stock goes down ? even the best ones. We ended an 18 year bull market in 2000 and almost without exception every stock headed for the exit.

Bull and bear markets follow relatively standard patterns of about 16 to 18 years up and 16 to 18 years down and the valuations go right along with them. If you own stocks or especially index funds during the bear periods you will be lucky to have broken even at the end of the 16-year cycle. Cash in your mattress will outperform market returns while the bear is in charge.

During these bear times there will be periods when the market will have a nice advance such as the one we saw start in 2003. These intermediate rises can ultimately bring many investors back into the market only to lose it when the rally is over and true valuation returns.

One valuation measurement for the overall market is the Price/Earnings ratio of the S&P500 Index. The median number for the historic purposes has been around 14. Today it is running about 21 which is considered high. When bear markets end the P/E can be about 6 or 8. There are other factors to be considered when buying any stock or fund, but the one thing that is most important is to have an exit strategy. Without one you will give back your profits.

No one knows exactly where the top or bottom of a market move will be. Knowing conventional valuations is one tool to help your buying and selling decisions.

Al Thomas’ book, If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It! has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

On Monday, November 25, 2000 Investor’s Business Daily listed on page B1 the Top 25 Growth Mutual Funds for the last 36 months along with their performance for the year 2000 to date. Only four showed a profit this year of 21% and the other three had increases of 12%, 5%, and 5%. Fifteen had loss of from 10% to 28% and the other 6 were down slightly.

In the column next to them there is a list of Top 25 Growth Funds for the past 3 months for the year 2000 to date. Only 2 had increases in price for the year 2000, 4 were even and all the rest are showing losses for the year.

Now pay attention and think about this next sentence. Not one mutual fund appears in both lists.

What is the significance of this? It very simply tells you that buy and hold is NOT the way to make money with mutual funds.

I have been preaching for years to buy only no-load mutual funds and hold them only as long as they are going up. When they stop going up you sell them (paying no commission) and find another fund that is going up as the place to have your money. In this current bear market the latter is hard to find so what do you do? Put your money in a money market account and don’t worry about the market going down and dragging your investment with it. Protect your capital!

Don’t throw up your hands and say I can’t do that because my broker says to buy and hold – the market always comes back. It is not his money. It is yours. You must be the one to initiate the action to protect your capital. Brokers are not taught how to do this. I know – I used to own a brokerage company.

Brokers have been smart enough to learn, but taught all the wrong things when it comes to investing money. They claim you can’t time the market. WRONG again. They never encourage you to place stop-loss orders so you won’t lose all your money when you buy a new stock or fund and they never encourage you to use a trailing stop to protect the profits you have made.

I know there are people reading this column who have had stocks that have doubled, tripled, even more and now have that same stock that is now selling for less than they bought it.. Where was your broker when all this was happening? If he is so smart why didn’t he tell you to sell at the top? This also applies to mutual funds.

What I am trying to get across is the simple message that you cannot buy and hold. The secret every knowledgeable investor knows is to protect his capital first and then to protect his profits second.

Al Thomas’ book, If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It! has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

What is the first step (and often last) for the new daytrader? Turn on CNBC and wait for the news, of course (don?t deny it, you have been there). Then when you hear the late breaking ?real time? news, you buy good news (or sell short bad news) in an attempt to beat the other 8 million listeners. Sound like a winning plan?

After realizing that is kind of hit or miss, you decide to fire up the ?real? real time news service. Of course, at this point, it hasn?t dawned on you. It is not just the fact that you are not really ?beating? anyone to the news. You begin to realize, even if I do have the news first, what do I do with it?

Have you ever heard of a stock gapping up big on fantastic earnings; then selling off for 2 weeks? We have all seen it. Good news reacted to in a negative way; bad new reacted to in a positive way. Or, good news reacted to in such a positive way, that the stock gaps so far you are not sure what to do. How do you make sense of all this?

First of all, you may want to just turn off the news. Yes, that is correct. You can keep a list of the stocks that are ?in the news? for your watch list if you like. However, you can skip the part about researching the news. This does not sit well with many traders. They feel it is ?their job? to research these things. The truth is, you cannot. We play people?s reactions to the news, not our personal view of what the news is. We do this by looking at charts.

Below are some examples. Two of them resulted in plays. Take a look at what happened, compared to the news. These three were picked because they all solicited a strong view from many traders, even by email. ?Did you know that xyz had bad news today and are playing it?

Take McDonalds on Dec 24, 2003. You may remember the mad cow scare that day. All ?hamburger places? gapped down, and the overwhelming consensus was (even CNBC told us this) that this scare is the end of the American Hamburger. It would be a ?no brainer? to short these stocks, as they are certain to fall more.

Well, if they are certain to fall more, why didn?t they open at that lower price? You see; there are no gifts. The news was out and was digested by the public. What the stock does after that is not a function of ?good or bad? news. It opens at equilibrium; and then the move can be in either direction. The chart pattern (without any concern for the news) was bearish, but it did not form a ?pattern? that we recognize as a trade. No play was made, though there were possibilities for intraday plays once the trend was set. Notice how long the ?bad news? continued to ?hurt? the stock. Why did it go up? Who knows. Well, there were many commentators and analysts that told us the answer after the close. One of the stories was that the shock sent beef prices tumbling, which would reduce the operating costs of fast food restaurants. Now why didn?t we think of that?

Next is Marathon Oil. Here there was little chance for failure. The company was doing a ?secondary offering? or something similar. On the morning in question, they actually came out and priced the stock below the current price (below where it opened even). Certainly this stock had to go down further. Well, this time, the chart showed a pattern we know well; a tactic known as a Gap play. How could a stock go up in this situation? Read the McDonalds paragraph above. All the answers are the same. We don?t understand enough about secondary stock offerings to try to explain it. Or, if we do understand, it is not worth explaining. That is the point. The best way to play this was to have no knowledge of the actual news; just to know the stock was gapping so you can find the play.

Last was a past play on Delta Airlines. This is a favorite because we had the analysts, coming in to help us determine when to buy and sell stocks.

The big news posted was that Delta may have to file for bankruptcy. Well, we guess that means the stock is worth ?zero?? Or is it worth ?asset value?? That day the stock did not go below $4.53. On the next day, we have a revision of Delta Airlines? outlook to ?negative?. The day after that, Moody?s decides it may cut Delta?s ratings. The stock talks bankruptcy, and then analysts downgrade it? Do we need to pay analysts for this keen information and insight? Note, the stock had never traded under the low set on May 10th, the day the news of bankruptcy was released. Notice the volume that came in on that day. Notice that this volume came in after the stock already dropped 66% in four months. Mr. Analyst, you are now down grading the stock? Where were you during this huge fall? Waiting for the company to tell us they are in trouble? This stock was played long on May 12th at $4.67.

News will move stocks. It can be a means of finding stocks to watch and see if any technical patterns form. Do not get caught up in the game of trying to make trades based on your ?analysis? of the news. Everyone is different in how they handle thing. If you have a difficult time with news, we hope this was helpful to you.

The Stocks2Watch? newsletter has been published since 1998.

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Stock market is an inquisitive place for many. It is because the place has given birth to many millionaires and is also responsible for turning millionaires to locals. Thus the bulls and bears have always been charismatic. Now millions of people invest in the stock market to make good money. The aura of the place is such that it is swarming with people any hour of the day and any season of the year. But only few know that how the stock market came into existence or what actually are its origins.

A short encounter with the past

The oldest stock certificate was issued in favor of a Dutch company in 1606. The purpose of this company was to benefit from the spice trade between India and the Far East. During the 18th and the 19th centuries the trade of spices drifted to England when Napoleon reigned over the place. With the development of United States of America as a colony to British and Alexander Hamilton (the first US secretary of the Treasury) flourished the American Stock Exchange. Hamilton played a crucial role in encouraging the trading in the Wall Street and Broad Street in New York. The New York Stock and Exchange Board now popularly known as the New York Stock Exchange was organized by the traders of New York in 1817 when trade and commerce bloomed there.

A precise survey of the Western stock market

?The Wall Street- a place where the whole of 18th century trade and commerce took place, Wall Street is a recognized place across the globe. The street was termed as Wall Street since it ran alongside a wall that was taken as the northern boundary of New Amsterdam in 17th century.

The Wall Street is known for the J.P. Morgan?s million dollar merger that created US Steel Corporation, the ruinous crisis that resulted in Great Depression and the ?Black Monday? of 1987.

?The NYSE or the New York Stock Exchange is perhaps the foremost and so the oldest stock exchange in United States that is believed to be born in 1792. The significant aspects related to NYSE include the Buttonwood Agreement when 24 stockbrokers and traders of New York signed this accord and established the New York Stock Exchange and Securities Board which is now recognized as the NYSE; the considerable swings that the NYSE saw during the 20th and 21st century; the hitting of the 100 and later even 1000 mark by the Dow around 1971 and the mark of 10,000 that the Dow scaled in 1999.

?NASDAQ is the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Questions. It is an apparent or virtual stock market where all trading is done through the electronic media. NASDAQ, the global and the largest electronic stock market today was first established in 1971 in United States at the time when computers were not as developed as they are today and it was very difficult to compute. The main exchange of NASDAQ is in United Sates while its branches can be found in Canada and Japan and it is also linked to markets of Hong Kong and Europe. NASDAQ functions by purchasing and selling the over- the- counter or OTC stocks.

?AMEX-was discovered in 1842. The putative father of the institution is Edward Mc Cormick (the commissioner of SEC) who endowed it with its current name. It started its journey as the New York Curb Exchange and its name is factual. The AMEX in contrast to the NYSE operates with the small and more dynamic companies some of which even make it to the NYSE board.

Mansi aggarwal writes about stock market. Learn more at http://www.stockmarketstory.com .

What are you thinking when it comes to your no load mutual fund selections? Are you saving pennies and sacrificing dollars?

Are you spending your time looking at expense ratios, analyzing Morningstar ratings and searching for funds with low fees and no 12b1 charges? If you are like most people, you know these things in and out. You’ve spent hours evaluating them, and your chosen mutual funds cost little to purchase and maintain. But they still don’t perform to your hopes and expectations.

So, why is this happening? Because this kind of investing focuses on cost as opposed to value.

Investors with this philosophy have usually interviewed numerous advisors. But instead of trying to find someone suitable with a sensible approach, they only want to know who has the lowest fees. That’s like going to the cheapest auto repair shop and getting the best price, but your car still doesn’t run well.

Then there are the investors who call or email me wanting a recommendation on a no load mutual fund. They want one with no 12b1 charge, but they completely ignore the issue of how the fund might perform.

Both these kinds of investors spend their time trying to save pennies and in the process they are losing dollars. Instead of falling into the penny wise, dollar foolish trap, here are some ideas that will assist you in evaluating the end profit rather than just the short term saving.

1. Shift your focus from penny pinching to looking at the big picture: What can a mutual fund or an advisor do for you, not how much does it cost? Why? If you buy a given no load mutual fund at the right time and it gains a tidy 15% for you over a 6 week period, would you really care about the costs? If a mutual fund?or an advisor for that matter?can give you superior performance and an increase of several percentage points over your bargain price pick wouldn’t you pay an extra 0.25%?

2. Consider finding a fee-based investment advisor who uses a facts-based methodology and has a track record indicating those kinds of returns. For example, in my own practice I used a trend tracking approach to get my clients into the market on April 29, 2003. Plus, our research and homework led us to recommending funds that gained anywhere from 11.50% to 22.00% over the following 6 week period. How did you do during that time? Do you think any of my clients care whether one of these funds has a small 12b 1 charge? Or whether they have the lowest expense ratios in the industry? I know they don’t.

The bottom line is to look at costs as balanced by performance and that’s where you find value. Then seek true value not simple savings, enjoy healthy dollar-level returns and don’t sweat the pennies.

About The Author

Ulli Niemann is an investment advisor and has been writing about objective, methodical approaches to investing for over 10 years. He eluded the bear market of 2000 and has helped countless of people make better investment decisions. To find out more about his approach and his FREE Newsletter, please visit: www.successful-investment.com; ulli@successful-investment.com