At some point every investor, trader, or stock picker has dreamt of buying a stock right before some major news turning him/her into a retired millionaire seemingly overnight.

It’s fair to think that way, and I’ve done it myself several times. After all we buy stocks to see our investments go up in value. So wouldn't it be great to buy stocks before the market goes up? This is called market timing. Others might tell you it's impossible to time the market. Well, it's actually pretty easy to do. Click here to find out how.

We’re all told by someone that we should save our money and then we should invest it in stocks and bonds; but are we really ready to invest, is there a time when we aren’t yet ready to invest? Click here to read why and find out your answer.

“Good stock picking is controlled by good luck; bad stock picking is controlled by bad luck.  Luck determines your stock picking ability.”

There is no evidence proving anyone can consistently pick stocks and outperform the market’s return over time. We all get lucky and we all get unlucky, too. Picking individual stocks is a coin flip, you will be right 50% of the time and you will be wrong 50% of the time. 

I  don’t like those odds. Some people will get lucky a few years in a row; these people attract the press and get labeled stock pickers or great mutual fund managers. But the truth is these people inevitably underperform the market average over any given length of time – history has proven this. The general consensus is that a stock picker or a fund manager needs at least 20 years of performance to remove luck and chance from their return track record before any conclusions can be drawn.

“The only stock price pattern is randomness; you cannot predict the future price movement of a stock (and no one else can either)”

Stock prices are determined by supply and demand; because prices reflect all known information a mispriced security cannot be known in advance. Take every single investor in the stock market universe; they are all doing technical analysis, fundamental analysis, following the advice of a broker, listening to a friend with a hot stock tip, throwing darts at board with ticker symbols on it, etc. – they are doing anything and everything to form an opinion about a stock.