Commodities Rising: The Reality Behind the Hype and How To Really Profit in the Commodities Market

12

The Fundamentals Still Apply

If I have succeeded in my goal for this book, you now are much less certain and more introspective about investing in commodities than you were at the outset. I presume you were already interested in investing in commodities—otherwise you would not have bought the book and read it. So that puts you into one of several categories. One category of potential readers includes the general investors who have heard all the hype about the easy money to be made in the commodities supercycle now under way and who are seeking some guidance as to whether to believe the sales pitches, and, if so, how to approach investing in commodities.

There is no easy money to be made, in the long run, in financial markets. There are wins and losses, and it takes a lot of hard work, careful analysis, and experience to develop the seeming intuition that allows an investor to stick to his convictions at times, and to take the profits and liquidate positions at other times. I hope this book has put some fear of losing money into the hearts and minds of some investors who had bit into the commodities supercycle pablum hook, line, and sinker.

Voiced another way, there is an old Taoist saying that the wise person is full of anxiety in undertaking anything, and so he is always successful. In other words, do your homework. Study hard. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is false. If someone says that commodities bull markets last 17 years, ask to see the data. If ...