A summary on Strategies from Complete the art of investing

This book is lengthy with a lot of information on strategies. I have used some of them based on the current market conditions and my own requirements. I include some I believe they have values to some investors. For just a moment, forget everything you’ve learned here and elsewhere on strategies and use your common sense to see whether the following makes sense to you.

·         Evaluate your requirements and select the strategy or strategies you want. Test them thoroughly on paper before committing real money.

·         Need to check recent performance of your screens. There are no evergreen strategies that I know of. This is why many gurus have failed in 2015 (and so far in the first part of 2016) as the market changed.

·         Some strategies perform better in up markets and vice versa.

·         Stick with my three-step process: Market Timing, Screen Stocks and Evaluate Stocks.

When the market is risky, do not buy stocks. “Strategy” is the first part of Screening Stocks and the second part is when and why to sell stocks. You need to provide exit strategy such as stop orders to reduce further losses.

Some strategies perform better for holding stocks short term (3 months or less), while some (most based on value) perform better in the longer term (12 months or more).

Some strategies perform better in a specific stage of a market cycle. Select several strategies for paper trading. Use the one that performs best in the last month or two. It could continue the performance in the coming month. In any case, use stops to protect your investments.  

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For more of my reasoning, check out the book described next. The Kindle has 850 pages (6*9) for $9.99. It could be the best $10 you ever spend.

The above is an abstract from my book "Complete the Art of Investing" which is available from Amazon.


I challenged to have the best-performed article in Seeking Alpha history, an investing site, for recommending 5 or more stocks in one year after the publish date. The concepts for that article are discussed in this book.

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