Investment Articles by Tom Madell

Is Successful Investing Like Buying a New Car?: There are some similarities, but sucessful investing requires more on-going effort.

A 60/40 Stock/Nonstock Allocation: This strategy works, provided you re-balance your portfolio periodically. But in fact, most investors did not really maintain such an allocation during recent years. Rather, most tended to be more highly invested in stocks, especially toward the end of the last decade and even into the beginning of this one.

A Long-Term Investing Approach Does Not Imply Inaction: We often just muddle through, frequently failing through our lack of knowledge to take full advantage of some of the various tax breaks and planning strategies that could especially help when recessionary or retirement times come our way, which they inevitably do.

What Is the Best Way to Oversee Your Fund Portfolio?: Here's a short list of suggestions.

An Overlooked Psychological Factor Critical to Investment Success: Investors who are open to a variety of inputs and strategies often do better than those who think that a single strategy or even a single category of investments will always work out favorably in the end.

How to Survive a Market Downturn: As a favorable market progresses investors become convinced that these assets are intrinsically valuable, and even a succession of negative events doesn't alter expectations. It is only through a series of negative economic changes that the long-term trend finally reverses and a long bout of pessimism sets in.

Investment Advice for the Next Ten Years: Given that many of us would rather not think too much about our investments now, the following ten thoughts are designed to be a quick read.

Can a Little Extra Effort Enhance Your Investment Returns?: If you can carve out a little more time to spend on your investments than the average investor, you should be able to do enough better than that average investor as a result to amply reward your efforts, whether in good markets or in bad.

Is It a Waste of Time to Attempt to Predict Prices of Stocks or Bonds?: A careful analysis of economic data can lead you to improved investment performance.

How to Get to Your Retirement Goals: You can greatly increase your chances of achieving a comfortable retirement, or whatever you choose to do in the future, by adhering to the following guidelines.

Common Potentially Mistaken Investment Decisions: Common mistakes made when picking a mutual fund, then adding or selling shares from it.

Do You Have the Characteristics Necessary to Be Successful as an Investor?: Personality characteristics play a very important role in the degree of success most mutual fund investors enjoy through the years.

Considerations Before Selling or Exchanging Between Funds: Once you have decided on your allocations, you will have a formula in place to guide your purchases. But what about shifting balances out of funds as conditions change? Here are some things you should consider.

The Paths to Success: What if you could do just 1% better than you are now doing?

About the Author

Tom Madell, Ph.D. publishes free mutual fund advice at his website at http://funds-newsletter.com. His Newsletters, beginning in May, 1999, were designed for educational purposes only and are not-for-profit and ad-free. Had you been reading and following the advice on this site, you would have done far better than the cumulative negative stock market returns over the last 5 years. Tom's investment articles have been chosen as featured articles on numerous other websites.

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