Trying to conceptualize an investment style is difficult, due in part to the fact that the concept is about as concrete as quicksand. In today’s world of ETFs, structured products, debt swaps, investment styles seem to increasingly blend together with every hot new product that hits the market. For the next several weeks, we will provide you with two things: what a style consists of, and some background as to what popular options are available. It’s important to familiarize yourself among all of these styles if you want to be a consistent winner in the stock market.
You have to be able to play in the every changing panoply of odds and opportunities the market presents. If you are strictly an investor who only can profit from a rising market, you will be better off in an index or managed fund that is devoted to that strategy. If you can only rationalize buying value stocks, you may undergo periods of great underperformance when value is not in vogue like the latter years of the 1990’s when the Internet and technology were the drivers of both the economy and stock market. Try this analogy. You are a clothing store owner in a typical town in America. Your town has four distinct seasons: summer, fall, winter, and spring. Are you only going to sell clothes for the summer? If that’s the case, business is going to be pretty bad during three fourths of the year.
Over the next several weeks, we will be going over a number of investment styles to consider employing in your own strategy.
An excerpt of “The Investment Survival Guide”