If you go by the conventional wisdom, investors come in two varieties.

On one hand, you have investors who ply their trade in the belief that the past performance of a stock has clues to its future performance.  Technical investing, as it is commonly known, depends much on behavioral aspects of investing, with stock charts being the main tools of the trade.

On the other hand, you have investors who believe that investing success lies in researching the business of the company on a fundamental level, and digging deep into a business? ability to generate profits over a long term.

Fundamental investing is further divided into growth investing and value investing.

Traditional media, and indeed a surfeit of financial publications, both online and offline, take pains to point out the differences between the value investing and growth investing approach.

But at the root, all investing is value investing.

To understand this, we need to go back to the basic principles of fundamental investing. Continue Reading

I explained in an earlier article here (“A Better and Less Risky Way to Invest in Stocks”) why you need to take into consideration the price at which stocks are selling when setting your stock allocation.  Stocks offer lower returns and greater risk when purchased at high prices.  So those who go with higher stock allocations when stocks are cheap and with lower stock allocations when stocks are overpriced can expect to be able to retire five to ten years sooner than those who follow Buy-and-Hold strategies, according to the academic research of the past 30 years.

The purpose of this follow-up article is to offer guidance on how to know when to change your stock allocation and by how much.  I suggest a four-step process: Continue Reading