Book Report - Four Pillars of Investing

Be careful what you say to two burly truck drivers.

Deliverence?

[sgeeeee]

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Yep, and I look in the mirror and think, "Damn, you look good!" *. . .

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I look in the mirror and say "Oh Lord, why am I so ugly?"

I look in the mirror and think, "I'll bet I could get all the dust off of that with a used dryer sheet."

[unclemick]

Clean your mirror with a used dryer sheet and look yourself in the eye - 'Will I have the courage to rebalance asset classes when the market goes bonkers?'.

[BigMoneyJim]

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Regarding "beating the market", I dont think there is any research that tracks individual peoples portfolios and determines if a 500k-2M portfolio can consistently beat the market. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence showing smart funds investing in small-mid caps can outperform (a la Lynch) and then mire down when the fund inflow overcomes the ability to continue to invest in the same style. I havent looked at TMF portfolios in a million years, do any of theirs show consistent market beating performance?

I believe the TMF real money portfolios (Foolish Four, Rule Breaker, etc.) were all liquidated a while back during one of the downsizings. I wasn't sure, but I sure couldn't find any mention of them on the main site. And from my memory they weren't doing well at all after mid-2000; the Rule Breaker in particular held several stocks that tanked. In my eye TMF has long since abandoned their "fool" do-it-yourself look-here's-how attitude and are simply trying to sell stock picks along with the rest of the "wise". I see on the recent ads that Tom Gardner has shed his jester's suit and hat and sports a suit, tie and bald head with references to something working since 1958. I don't even read the site anymore, except for a couple of articles I didn't like linked from Yahoo Finance and then just looking for the real money portfolios today.

Sorry about the offtopic commentary, but back on point I don't think the TMF real money portfolios help make a case for the small guy picking stocks.

I know in mid-2000 I was considering buying individual stocks but kept putting it off. I'm glad I did because Cisco, Nortel and Intel were the kinds of companies in which I was considering buying stock. If somebody can beat the market, it sure ain't me!

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Fool still has some info on the site, its of course "you must pay" (I think not). The internet archive did have some info and it was amusing reading.

Both mail rule breaker/maker portfolios were dissolved several years ago while severely underwater. In looking at the numbers though, it appears they were still ahead of the s&p500 in losses when they pulled the plug.

Even more amusing was reading a long page of about 20 separate non mea culpas.

See it here

http://web.archive.org/web/200212130...ontmimicus.htm

The web archive, if you havent visited it, can amuse for hours. You can go back in time to see web sites that no longer exist, or what was news years ago.

Even more fun was reading one of the major fools articles from several years ago announcing that the nasdaq was headed to 500, along with extensive math and formulae proving this direction. The nasdaq found a bottom about a week later and has since nearly doubled, rather than halved.