Shana Novak/DigitalVision via Getty Images What is "the stock market?" Sounds like a simple question. But increasingly it is a big hot steaming mess of an answer. That's because what investment industry carnival barkers and every Tic-Toc investment guru has trained the masses to think a certain way.
"Investing" could be just buying an S&P 500 index fund and going on with your life. Roughly speaking, history tells us that in a given year, you could make 40%..
.or lose 40%. How will an investor react if and when the latter occurs, which likely occur a few times during their investing life span? Most people have no idea, until it strikes.
Similar to when it is a real fire, not a fire alarm. OK, maybe a bit dramatic there. The 30 Dow stocks ( NYSEARCA: DIA ) and Nasdaq 100 collection ( QQQ ) are inanimate objects.
They don’t have emotions. But investors sure do, and they are expressing those emotions in full color, right in front of all of us. Taking equity investing a step further Seeking Alpha is great because it allows investors to go as deep as they wish in pursuing investment returns and managing risk.
I focus a lot more of my time than most on the latter, managing risk. That's because at nearly 60 years old, I'm not in any mood to go back and try to build a nest egg all over again. And so, when I find a pattern that could be of broad interest, allowing investors to go one step deeper down the road from the "buy and hold SPY" approach, I write about it.
In fact, there's a g.