Misguided trading strategies

Almost everyone can have an opinion about which stocks to buy or sell. The result? Confusion of the investing public. When generally respected websites like marketwatch.com give a voice to columnists who give seemingly easy to follow trading strategies, they omit to put their advice into perspective. What kind of an investor are you? Do you like to speculate (=day trade) or increase your investments over the long term? This particular advice by marketwatch.com, recommends buying three beaten down sectors once the index has reached an arbitrary technical yardstick. What it omits is the historical perspective: recently beaten down sectors underperform other sectors most of the time. There are many other reasons where the marketwatch column is wrong. I'll leave that for a future post.