I like some of Paul Farrell’s articles. While I can’t for the life of me agree with him on his investment strategies (hold your coffee house portfolio through any market condition), he wrote a fine piece called “Meltdown ‘inside’ Wall Street’s brain.”
He outlines the self-serving and brain washing acts that come with Wall Street’s manipulation, which I have touched on before in various posts. He offers “seven rules (out of 25) for bull-and-bear predators in a ‘brutal, manipulative’ world.”
While it’s a fun read, his conclusion that you must “redefine the rules of engagement and play the game by your rules,” will leave you wondering what the rules are that you should play by.
In my view, it’s certainly not the trap of Buying and Holding a coffee house portfolio blindly through the next bear market. That would be falling into Wall Street’s self serving trap of staying with a losing investment no matter what. Since most investor’s use mutual funds as their preferred investment tool that means you are still paying the company that loses money for you.
If your preference is ETFs, you won’t be paying anybody, but if you’re ignorant of trends you have nobody to blame but yourself when you get mauled by the bear, unless you have a disciplined exit strategy in place that you will actually execute.