STREET DOGS

From Art Huprich’s Market Truisms and Axioms: Any dead fish can go with the flow. It takes a strong fish to swim against the flow.

What seems hard at the time is usually, over time, right. Sell when you can, not when you have to. Wishful thinking can be detrimental to your financial wealth.

Portfolios heavy with underperforming stocks rarely outperform the market. If a stock doesn’t perform as expected in a short time, close it out or tighten your stop-loss point.

You can’t control the market. The best you can do is to understand what it’s trying to tell you. Learn to shift on a dime when the shifting time comes.

Don’t buy a stock simply because it has had a big decline from its high and is now “better value”, wait for the market to recognise “value” first.

Don’t average trading losses, meaning don’t put “good” money after “bad”.

Adding to a losing position will lead to ruin. There are periods when you don’t need to trade. Tips are something you leave for good service.

Technical analysis is a windsock, not a crystal ball.

There is never just one cockroach: bad news is seldom a one-time event, there’s usually more to follow.

Recognise that you can lose money even in the “best companies” if your timing is wrong. Yet, you can make money on a short-term basis even in stocks that have “mixed” fundamentals.

Accept that a loss is part of the investment process. The key is not letting it devastate your portfolio. To put it another way, “It’s not the ones that you sell that keep going up that matter, it’s the one you don’t sell that keeps going down that does.”

Always be a student, there is always someone smarter than you! [And] learn from your mistakes.