A MARKET WATCHER should watch the market.
I suppose I could fix my car, do my own dentistry or reshingle my roof. But since I have neither the expertise nor the time to devote to these critical tasks, I hire professionals to do these jobs for me.
The same holds true for managing money. Just because you can trade for pennies on the web doesn’t mean you necessarily should. The markets aren’t rocket science, but they can be a full-time job. And while most people are perfectly capable of managing their own account, many simply don’t have the interest or the time to do it properly.
In investing, picking the jockey is almost as tough as picking the horse. There are literally hundreds of thousands of mutual funds, financial planners, account executives and investment advisers eager to grab their 1%. Where do you begin?
A good accountant is invaluable, but insufficient — after all, you’ve got to make money before you pretty it up for Uncle Sam. And while the best stock analysts might be able to tell you how many Huggies Wal-Mart (WMT) is going to sell in the third quarter, what can they tell you about improving your portfolio’s bottom line?
While I can appreciate the value of an attentive financial planner, I find that far too many are wet behind the ears. Somewhere along the line, their version of “analysis” became hypothetical, pretax profits based on a 12% annualized return from stocks. We see how well that turned out. (more…)
