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Investment Secrets: Follow the Trend

You will find that the traditional method of long term investing is to buy and hold which is what it says. You buy an investment and hold this come what may until you need the funds returned, have retired or hopefully met your goal. But the main problem with this is that you are disciplined never to exit your investment therefore it is quite possible that any gains you could make one year you might give back the next year. Here is a graph of the Nasdaq Index in the US, which clearly shows how you can give back the returns you have made by holding too long.

If you had invested at that time in October 1998 you would have seen your investment gain by over 200% and then fall right back to a point in October 2002 where you would be losing over 20% and now (September 2006) all you would be returning is just 25% in 8 years.

Let the trend be your friend

Keeping things as simple as possible is important, by following trends we will be able to recognise more easily times to invest and times to be cautious. This will hopefully allow investors to take advantage of when the market rallies and avoid the market during downturns.

The following graph shows an example of how following the trend can be good for your wealth and also means you take less risk.
By following the trend in this graph of the S&P 500 Index in the US you would have invested in October 1998 and followed the trend of the purple line and then exited in October 2000 realising a profit of over 40% and then avoiding the downturn which lost over 30% and then investing again to take advantage of the next up trend which is returning another 40% today (September 2006).
In an uncertain world which method would you prefer? So why not contact us to see how we can help increase your wealth.