Cocktail Investing

Chapter 3The Economy versus the Markets

Economics is half psychology and half Grade Three arithmetic, and the U.S. does not now have either half right.

– Conrad Black

There are a number of ways to pick your investments, from being a voracious reader of all things, to following the pundits of the day, to getting informal advice from your stylist/barber, to eavesdropping on line at Starbucks. One of the biggest mistakes is not having an investment process, and while that sounds rather daunting, once you see the world through the lenses that we'll share with you over the coming chapters, it will be like riding a bicycle or mixing your favorite cocktail; you will find yourself doing it naturally.

Before we continue, we have a question to ask you.

Have you ever tried to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich by spreading the jelly on the peanut butter or vice versa?

If you've ever tried it, you know it doesn't work.

It's one of those rare occasions where doing it the wrong way is immediately obvious. We bet you've had some dangerously good cocktails and some that you couldn't bring yourself to sip more than once or twice. Odds are they were made with similar ingredients but there is art in that shaker.

We would argue the same holds true with picking investments and how they are combined; as the saying goes, if it were easy, everyone would be good at it.

Much like that peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a cocktail, you need to know where to start. Many individual investors start ...