Active as Opposed to Passive Management of Assets

The Wall Street establishment generally espouses the cause of passive investment management. Buy your favorite stocks or mutual funds or bonds, hold on through thick and thin, and hope that the stock and bonds markets are on upswings when you need the money. Not necessarily the worst of strategies—unless, of course, you happened to need to draw on your capital in mid-2002, at a time when stocks were more than 50%, on average, below their all-time peaks.
By the time you finish this book, you can be a successful active manager of your own investments and by so doing add to the returns available from the usual sources to passive investors. As an active manager, you will be able to do the following:

• Actively monitor the investment universe and select investment areas—and individual investments within those areas— likely to outperform the average investment of similar risk. In other words, you will have some idea as to when to emphasize bonds, stocks, gold, real estate, and international positions and when to opt for money market and other safe havens.
• You will have the ability to enter, and will enter, into investments relatively early in their rise and exit relatively close to their peak, either prior to or relatively soon after the final top is made. This does not mean that you have to be the first one in and the first one out. It does mean that you will be able to catch the major portion of up moves, while avoiding at least significant portions of the downswings that plague every investment at some time or other.
• And finally, you will be alert to special opportunities that develop from time to time in almost all investment areas and be able, ready, and willing to take advantage of such opportunities.
  

The benefits of active and successful management are self-evident.