Investing for Humans --
The New Buy-and-Hold

The conventional investing advice doesn't work.

Most of it is ivory tower stuff. Do you know what academics like to study? They like to study things that are easy to study. They like to put lots of numbers in lots of calculators and jingle them and jangle them and turn them about and see what pops out. They call what pops out "findings" and all sorts of people are happy to pass along these findings to you, the middle-class investor.

I have great respect for people who are skilled in the use of numbers. Such people do important work, and we all should be grateful when they discover things that really do help us invest more successfully. Unfortunately, much of what the numbers guys come up with is gravely flawed because the assumptions employed to make the numbers-generation process move smoothly are terribly, terribly artificial and silly and misleading.

We need research into what the numbers say. But we need realistic research into what the numbers say.

Investments are held by humans. Most of the existing investing research ignores the human factor. It assumes that humans are going to behave in certain ways in which humans rarely do behave. Much of this stuff is dangerous to your hopes of attaining financial freedom early in life.

One thing that the conventional investing advisors get right is the emphasis they place on engaging in long-term buy-and-hold investing. Unfortunately, the advice they offer regarding the setting of one's asset allocation makes it unlikely that many of their readers will be able not only to talk the buy-and-hold talk but also to walk the buy-and-hold walk. The purpose of this section of the site is to explore what is needed to become a true buy-and-hold investor, someone who holds stocks for the long run not just on paper but in real life.

The New Buy-and-Hold is a new investing paradigm, which I developed with the help of input from fellow community members during investing discussions held at Financial Freedom Community discussion boards. This page briefly describes and provides link to articles at the PassionSaving.com site discussing how to develop more realistic asset allocation strategies than those typically urged during the years in which the Stocks-for-the-Long-Run Investing Paradigm remained dominant.

Stock Valuation Made Easy
Article #1 on The Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- Bogle and Buffett go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

Investor Confidence -- What's Faith Got to Do, Got to Do With It?
Article #2 on the Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- Developing investor confidence can be compared to developing a faith in God -- it requires a belief in the unseen.

Eight Investing Questions You Need Answered Before Putting Money Down
Article #3 on The Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- Don't take every investing expert to be your friend.

Basics of the New Buy-and-Hold
Article 4 on The Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- This article provides answers to five basic questions about the new investing paradigm.

Eighteen Tenets of the New Buy-and-Hold
Article #5 on The New Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- This article lists and briefly describes eighteen tenets of The New Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm.

Investing Experts Are Politicians
Article #6 on The Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- Investing experts employ gobbledygook and seek to avoid accountability.

Middle-Class Investors Are At a Disadvantage
Article #7 on the Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- Experts give different advice to paying clients than they do to the middle-class investors who rely on free sources of investing guidance.

Ten Investing Rules That Sum It All Up
Article #8 on The Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- Ten investing rules on what it takes to get what works on paper to work in real life.

It Takes More Than Intelligence to be an Intelligent Investor
Article #9 on The Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- The successful investor combines the kind of intelligence measured in I.Q. points with common sense, emotional balance, and street smarts.

Why You Want to Buy Investing Newsletters
Article #10 on The Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- Some good reasons, some not-so-good reasons.

Why Investing Books Are Boring
Article #11 on the Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- Most investing books are boring because they talk down to the reader, working from a common assumption among investing experts that middle-class investors are stupid.

The Last Bear Market, The Last Bull Market
Article #12 on the Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- In the future, the highs may not be as high and the lows may not be as low.

Stock Investing Risks That Are Often Overlooked
Article #13 on The Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- A big drop in stock prices may damage your ego and your hopes for the future as well as your portfolio.

The 24 Most Common and Most Costly Investing Mistakes
Article #14 on The Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- Don't try these at home.

New Ideas on Asset Allocation
Article #15 on The Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- Why the conventional asset allocation advice doesn't work, and what does.

A Behavioral Finance Approach to Picking Stocks
Article #16 on The Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- Eight ways in which an understanding of behavioral finance might help in picking stocks today.

Technical Analysis for Non-Dummies
Article #17 on The Realistic Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm -- The dismissive attitude that some evidence toward technical analysis is a turn-off.