In times of uncertainty, when many fear the sky is falling and that there is no hope for recovery, the wise investors plant their seeds. The wise investors are not bothered that the seeds will not grow into anything for many years; This is expected and can be considered the price of admission for any good deal.

Sometimes investing can be incredibly simplified using common sense techniques. Applying common sense to your investing usually results with profitable returns. The reason that using common sense works is that for some unexplainable reason there is a lack of it used in the stock market. As such, you can use common sense to somewhat predict/anticipate future stock market moves.

As I write this article, the stock market has taken an ugly tumble downward in the past few days. Fortunately for me I haven’t had so much as a penny invested in any stocks right now. The reason why I have my portfolio positioned 100% in cash is because I anticipated a poor start to the new year. How was I able to do it? I used common sense. Here’s how it’s done…

A commonly used phrase heard throughout the financial media is “the market”. While it seems like “The Market” and “The Stock Market” are the same thing, they actually share little in common and represent two entirely different things. Because of this common misunderstanding, many novice investors often can interpret news incorrectly. So I’m going to clearly define the two and explain the difference.

There is saying that no matter what is going on with the stock market, you can always make money somewhere. But what if the stock market is crashing or prices are on the decline? How then can you make money? This is where the need for short selling becomes apparent. With the ability to both buy long and short sell the market, you are now capable of making money regardless of which direction the market heads towards. But what is short selling and how does it work? Let’s take a look into the less appreciated form of making money in the stock market known as short selling.

Knowing how much you should invest in the stock market is incredibly important to figure out for your own financial sake. We’re all different in terms of our age, net worth, and risk-tolerance; A simple “invest 50% of your net assets in the stock market” recommendation is too vague for anyone to go by. So this article will show you what’s important when it comes to deciding how much money you should invest in the stock market.

As an investor who is very actively involved in the stock market, I hear a lot of unrealistic and outright wrong beliefs regarding the stock market. Sometimes it’s harmless myths being perpetuated, other times it’s dangerously wrong beliefs that lead to terrible advice being given for your portfolio. Here are some very common stock market myths:

It all started during the mid 1990’s. The Stock Market soared on technology and Internet stocks, IPOs were all the rage, and the sky was the limit for stock prices. The masses believed there was a new world upon us, and the internet was to become the future of business. Then reality set in when the hype didn’t live up to it’s promises, and the stock market crashed. If you take all of this for only its face value, all you see is what happens when a stock market gets overvalued and crashes, but if you look deeper you can find plenty of timeless lessons that every investor should learn. Here’s a few lessons that can be gathered from the Dot-Com bubble:

Imagine a stock that falls fifty percent one day and rises fifty percent the next day. Seems like you’d have broken even, right? Wrong. This is the beauty of mathematics, and it occurs in the stock market all the time. While this shouldn’t be a significant problem for your investments, it can often be misleading and confusing when researching and analyzing stocks.

Keeping yourself up to date with daily stock market happenings is necessary if you wish to be successful and grow your money. It is a rule to invest by that I strictly adhere to, and you should too! However this doesn’t mean you need to read every tidbit of information that occurs every day in the market. On an average day, reading a daily summary of stock market news is sufficient enough to keep up to date with the stock market. On other days when there are important events such as earnings reports or fed meetings, you would benefit from keeping up with the stock market on a more frequent basis than just after the closing bell. Regardless of whichever degree you wish to stay informed, here are some easy ways to follow the stock market on a daily basis:

It is possible to never fail in the stock market. So what is the catch, you ask? The catch is that you never give up on the stock market, that you don’t ever get discouraged, and that you believe in yourself while simultaneously never letting mistakes happen without learning from them. If you want to succeed with your investments, you need to learn from your failures. If you can do that, you ultimately can never fail in the stock market.