The Bull Hunters Guide

Greetings once again, and thanks for returning for another exciting entry on developing a success mentality for investing. We’ve been covering the ways in which the most successful investors look at the market, and the things they pay attention to when determining risk and value.

With so many players in the stock market, it’s easy to feel lost among a tide of people making major choices on a daily basis. You may be wondering how they all factor into the values of companies, and what their behavior does when it comes to choosing investments for yourself.

Acting On Stock Market Trends

One of the things taught to us early with investing is to be original and pioneering, to act against trends, think outside the box, and beat your own path. If stocks are being snatched up, you should sell, sell, sell, throwing yours to the market to obtain immense profit. If people are selling theirs at a loss, then you should work quick to snatch them up.

There’s value in that behavior, but it’s not a sealed deal for success. Rather, it’s just another investment strategy, and one that is dependent on constantly changing factors that the most successful investors evaluate on their own terms. When it comes to stocks, sometimes it is a good idea to follow trends and stick with the herd.

For example, if a stock is falling, waiting it out before making a purchase may be a good idea. Others will flock to it in the hopes of realising profit, only to see that it continues to fall and gain back a small amount of value. You, on the other hand, decided to wait until the stock hit the bottom, so that your investment gained a considerable return when a portion of the stock’s price returned.

The basic principle at work here is that the market is flexible, and so there are many opportunities that exist beyond what people have come to expect. It’s simply a matter of learning to evaluate performance on your own terms and not by what “common sense” strategy told you.

That’s it for the sixth chapter. We now have one more to go in this series detailing how you can employ effective thinking for making your investments successful! Stay tuned for more next week!

Sean Rasmussen
The Bullhunters Guide
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2010

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Hello, and welcome back to this next chapter on the subject of Investing In Gold. After having covered the basic nature of the substance and what it has meant in the history of economics, we’re going to address how and why it matters to your investments, and even explore some options regarding investment options and advantages.

The Consistent Value Of Gold

Since gold has a value that stays consistent, it’s a tremendous player in wealth creation and also for preserving that wealth. Even if it no longer determines the value of money, it still has a value all on its own that keeps money safe when money can no longer be counted on to stay the same.

If you take your money and personally choose to use it for Investing In Gold, you’re making the decision to preserve the value it represents when the money can’t represent it anymore.

Furthermore, gold is priced globally by U.S. dollars. If the dollar weakens, it only makes gold cheaper in terms of competing currencies. Also, when someone gets out of the American dollar and invests in gold, it makes the dollar weaker.

This only further strengths the first point, and creates stronger demand by investors who work with currencies that appreciate in value relative to the American dollar.

Gold Protects Wealth

In order to really get an idea of how gold protects wealth, you have to look at the world at large. There are numerous currencies and countries out there, all of which contribute to a situation of political and economic uncertainty.

Warring factions in the Middle East and Africa, competing European countries, the industrialization of third world countries - all of these things and more make the global economy a volatile landscape fraught with danger and risk. But if there is one thing that remains the same, then it is the value of gold.

Well, that’s all for now. We’ll come back shortly to discuss how you should approach Investing In Gold and how it can protect wealth through diversification. Stick around and tune in for the next chapter of gold as an investment.

Sean Rasmussen
The Bullhunters Guide
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2009

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Welcome back once again to our blog series on Asset Allocation. In this section, we’re going to cover the last of our tips on how to properly allocate your assets to ensure that your portfolio can survive anything the uncertain future might throw at it. In addition to a diverse selection of investments simply being safer, it also increases your potential for profits.

Remember, having a mix of safe investments gives you the buffer you need to really go out on a limb with those high risk ventures when the desire strikes you. Never be unprepared!

Take Action On Your Investment Plan

Our last tip for ensuring that you have a strongly diversified portfolio of investments is pretty straightforward: Act on your plan for investment.

Too many people who decide to diversify their portfolio get caught up in the analytical game. Because they’re suddenly looking at so many different types of investments (whereas previously they might have only been following one or two), they’re overwhelmed with a flood of information that they might not be quite equipped to process.

As a result, some people find themselves endlessly speculating as to which safe investments like bonds and mutual funds they want to take part in, looking at the charts for their interest and long term performance, as well as analyzing the five year growths for the stocks they have their eye on. This is practically a full time job in itself and many people never get around to acting on the investment strategies that they’re trying to build up for themselves.

So, be sure that you act as an investor! Take a look at the current state of your portfolio, and see how it’s split up between long and short term investments. Furthermore, make sure you take note of the real potential of each of those investments to make sure that everything is allocated appropriately. Then, once the plan is in place, act on it! If it’s failing, you can always change it later. But you’ll never know unless you try.

Next time, we’re taking to take a quick look back at all of these investing principles and summarize all we’ve learned about Asset Allocation.

See you next week for part 7 of Asset Allocation.

Sean Rasmussen
The Bullhunters Guide
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2009

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Welcome back once again to the Asset Allocation series. In this entry, we’re going to keep looking at different ways to diversify your investment portfolio to make sure that it can stand up to whatever the future might hold.

Remember, the more diverse your investments, the more likely you are to be able to survive sudden changes in the economy; even disastrous events like the collapse of an entire industry!

Start Investing Early On

Another key to being able to survive those disastrous events is our tip for this entry: start investing in your portfolio as early as you can. The sooner you begin to invest money, the more you stand to benefit from it. That much is obvious. However, this has some other unforeseen benefits that should be mentioned.

First of all, if you invest early, you’ll stand to make a great deal more off of the compounding interest that is hopefully associated with your safe long term investments. As a result, you’re going the most value possible out of your money, in addition to just simply having the opportunity to invest more of it in the first place.

Time Can Heal Wounds

Secondly, there is the matter that, the longer a span of time you invest over, the smaller each individual year will seem in the scope of things. If you only build up your investment portfolio for a total of five years, and two of those years are quite bad, you might well said that you had a fairly bad run of things overall. Those two years might represent a critical setback and the difference between a hard retirement and a luxurious one.

However, if you had been investing for a full thirty years, those two years wouldn’t seem anywhere near as significant. In fact, if they were bolstered by 28 excellent years of successful investment, you probably wouldn’t remember them at all by the time you reached retirement age.

See you next week for part 6 of Asset Allocation.

Sean Rasmussen
The Bullhunters Guide
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2009

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Welcome back to the bullhunter blog. This entry continues our series on Asset Allocation, and introduces an all new way to ensure that your investment portfolio consists of diverse investments from a broad range of categories and industries.

By having a balanced assortment of investments, you’re safeguarding yourself against unforeseen losses in the future, and working to make sure that you always have a safety net in case things take a negative turn.

As you know by now, a properly allocated portfolio consists of both long and short term investments. In other words, it has a nice mix of long term “safe” investments such as bonds and mutual funds next to an assortment of short term high risks investments such as “hot stocks”. But how do you decide just what that mixture should be?

What Is A Properly Allocated Portfolio

First of all, there is a “magic formula” that some analysts offer: subtract your age from 100. The number you end up with is the percentage of your money that should be put into long term investments, whereas your age represents the percentage of your money that should put into short term investments.

But beyond that, we recommend taking a hard look at your actual goals in life. Most likely, your goals are a mix of long and short term investments, just like your portfolio should be. Therefore, for each goal you have, it should be backed up by a certain fraction of the investments in your portfolio.

After all, if your goals are largely long term, you don’t need to worry very much about short term fluctuations and can continue to try your hand at risky investments.

However, if you need money in the next few years for some short term goals, it might pay to reallocate your assets such that more of them are situated in the “safe” types of investments.

See you next week for part 5 of Asset Allocation.

Sean Rasmussen
The Bullhunters Guide
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2009

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