Myths versus Mistakes in Investing

Riot of 

 Passive Muffs and Active Goofs 

 in Financial Markets

The financial markets abound with beguiling myths and wanton mistakes. The two kinds of stumblers – namely, fables and bungles – are distinct as well as entwined. The slew of snags act singly as well as jointly to trip up all manner of investors ranging from rank amateurs to badged professionals.

The multitude of pitfalls may be classified into a couple of broad groups. A myth conveys a false view of the marketplace while a mistake denotes a bum move harmful to the investor. The former is a passive flub while the latter is an active goof.

The two types of spoilers run riot in isolation or combination. For instance, a tall tale may bedevil an investor without giving rise to a costly mistake. On the flip side, a wrackful move could arise in the absence of a slippery myth. In other cases, the two forms of sinkers work together to foil the hapless investor, thus fouling their agenda to varying degrees ranging from patchy losses to complete wipeouts.

From a larger stance, the awesome complexity of the real and financial markets hamstrings any attempt to drum up a cogent program of investment. The actors floundering in the mire run the gamut from dewy-eyed tyros puttering in their spare time to wizen pros plying their trade the whole day long.

Whatever the scope of experience in the field, the mass of participants succumbs to both kinds of muck-ups. As a safeguard, the first task of the canny player is to recognize the welter of hidden traps along with the mordant wounds they inflict. In this treacherous environment, a solid grasp of the myths and mistakes is a basic requirement for avoiding the sinkholes and escaping the minefield.


NOTE:  The full article is available as a Web page at MintKit Core. As an alternative, the same material appears as a document in PDF form at Scribd. 

REVISED:  2021/4/11. 

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Cruddy Information on Exchange Traded Funds

 Guide to Choosing Exchange Traded Funds 

 in Spite of Shifty Information 

The modern investor faces a raft of challenges due to the confounding nature of the information available on exchange traded funds (ETFs). One of the stumpers stems from the profusion of new-fangled vehicles for investing in a particular market. Another hurdle lies in the occasional outcrop of blighted information which may be incorrect, outdated, and/or misleading.

In the age of the Internet, one of the most popular resources for the investing public lies in the online portal maintained by Yahoo Finance. Another fount of information for the financial community is a rating agency named Morningstar, which has served for decades as a beacon on communal pools such as index funds.

Sadly, though, the stalwarts of this breed are known to serve up faulty data at times. To begin with, the information provided by two different sources may be incompatible with each other. Worse yet, the figures displayed at a single Web site are at times internally inconsistent.

For these reasons, the astute investor is obliged to mull over the data obtained before making any crucial decision. Due to the pitfalls in store, a sensible course of action is to compare a batch of figures against each other in order to assess their consistency.

Another safeguard is to give preference to elementary items of data over derived statistics. Starting from basic nubs of information, the target figures can at times be calculated manually with relative ease.

An example in this vein is to figure out the average return on investment for a particular security based on the initial and final values of the price record. Another ploy is to check a selection of numerical data against a graphic display in order to confirm that the figures appear to be compatible.

The knotty issues of this sort can be explored in depth by way of a case study involving the energy sector. The application deals with the selection of exchange traded funds focused on the market for crude oil. The standard bearer for each type of vehicle is presented, along with a review of its performance in recent years.

From a larger stance, the goal of the exercise is to uncover the problems posed by confounding data. A related task is to present a muster of guidelines for dealing with the stumbling blocks.

Read more on Cruddy Information on Exchange Traded Funds.

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