There is no law which dictates that an Investor must be fully invested all the time. If, fortunately, the Investor’s portfolio consists of stable, dividend-paying stocks and he is in a profit position overall, the best course of action when the market seems to be going sideways may be to leave well enough alone and continue to build up cash while waiting patiently for an exceptional opportunity to arise. Likewise, the Investor who does not have much of an existing stock portfolio should not allow his store of cash to “burn a hole in his pocket.” The market is in a state of constant motion; the time will come when an opportunity is born, and he should plan on maintaining a store of cash in order to capitalize upon it.

After all, cash is a “position.” If an Investor is heavy in cash-at-interest, it means that he considers the opportunity in cash to be superior to the opportunity in stocks – or, more particularly, in the stock Indexes. One of the finest tools for identifying price trend reversals, or imminent reversals, is the Japanese Candlesticks price display format. This type of stock, commodity, Forex, and index price presentation is very intuitive. The viewer sees prices in a whole new light, and quickly comes to understand that he is being shown a much greater depth of information than is shown by the standard bar charts which have been in use for generations. In short, the candles reveal the psychology of the market, and are often uncanny in their ability to accurately predict the future course of prices.

One of the great errors, fallacies, and conceits of the present day is the so-called “Efficient Market Hypothesis,” which posits that the price of a stock at any given time is the “correct” price; and that it is impossible for the Investor to “time the market” or “beat the market,” so he might just as well invest his money in an Index and close his eyes. This is nonsense. What the inventors of the hypothesis are really saying is that they themselves do not know how to beat or time the market, so they have invented a hypothesis in justification. Possibly the greatest market timer today is Warren Buffett. It may be argued that he is not a market timer at all; rather, that he is the quintessence of a fundamental investor. Well, he certainly is that, but he is a market timer too, when – after assembling all of the facts and after due deliberation, he decides that “the time is right” to make a purchase. That’s market timing!

Most stock brokers, and certainly those advisers and investors who adhere to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, have a mind-set which thinks only in terms of increases in stock prices. The possibility of making a profit when prices decrease is totally foreign to them, and that such an approach carries with it something of a stigma of disrepute bordering on illegality. It is especially unfortunate to see the man-in-the-street investor captured by that sort of thinking, because not only does it tend to freeze his investments in place in the face of a declining market, it also deprives him of the opportunity to actually make a profit during the move.

There are many devices, or vehicles, available to the Investor which can serve to protect him in a downturn as well as making a profit during the move. Several highly reputable firms offer so-called “Inverse Funds,” which gain in value as stock prices decline. Inverse exchange-traded funds (”ETF’s”) offer much the same asset protection as well as the opportunity to make a profit.

The individual investor should rely on his own common sense, take an active part in the management of his own assets, and not allow himself to be seduced by anyone into believing that the best he can do is to buy an Index and then forget it. That is simply not true. The alert investor should question everything, question every assumption, and – certainly – check the profit performance which such advice produced during the market fall from the top in 2000 to the bottom in 2003. In short, what’s the broker’s or adviser’s record of success during those years? It’s easy to make money when the market is rising – “a rising tide lifts all boats” – but the acid test is performance during the bad times. Ask!