Some Sober Observations and Advice For Investing

Doing some research recently I’ve found that almost 9 out of 10 of the trades on any given day on Wall Street are between professionals, not individuals. Think about that for a second. When you go to make a trade, 9 out of 10 times you are doing it against someone that does it for a living. And not just a living, but paid really big bucks to do it and has a tremendous amount of resources behind them. This includes mutual funds, pension funds, hedge funds, professional speculators, investment banks, etc.

But it gets even better. If 9 out of 10 trades are between professionals that means that most of the trades pros do are between each other. Now that’s interesting to consider. That means the average you see in the investing products on Wall Street represents the best that the pros on Wall Street can do in any single year.

Often I read about an investing strategy or trading method that claims to beat the broad market indices. That’s a pretty bold claim. I have to wonder if the sellers of these ideas are aware of the reality of trading on Wall Street. To think that you’re going to teach an individual investor to go up against a highly skilled pro and win. It’s kind of like telling an amateur golfer they are going to turn into Tiger Woods if they just buy the right golf club. It’s a fun thing to think about, but just not very realistic.

Even much vaunted hedge funds, the supposed masters of secret Wall Street strategies, often bomb. If they can’t do it, what chance does an individual have?

Read the rest here.

This is good advice.  I particularly recommend the article linked in the source post.