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The
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Bonding
With Your Portfolio
By
Andrew Gordon
Stocks
are down and the yield on bonds is going up. So why not switch
more of your money into bonds?
I
can think of three good reasons.
1.
Yields are only slightly higher than last year, and in 2005
you were better off in cash equivalents (like CDs) than in
the vast majority of bond funds.
2.
If enough investment flows from stocks to bonds, the price
of bonds will start going up and the yield (which moves in
the opposite direction of price) will go down.
3.
If we're not in a bear market - and a lot of people (including
me) don't think we are ... yet - you'd be missing out on
immediate upside from your stock investments.
Just
a few short years ago, in mid 2002 and early 2003, mutual
fund shareholders pulled $110 billion out of stock funds.
Stocks rallied soon after, and those panicked investors were
left to count their losses.
So
think of this as a good time to tidy up your stock portfolio,
not to rush into an overhaul. Instead of switching into bonds,
look over your stock investments. Make sure you're not holding
onto any losers beyond your stop-loss points. And keep buying
stock. By rebalancing your portfolio, you might be able to
get a piece of some companies for 5 to 15 percent off what
they were going for three weeks ago.
[Ed.
Note: Andrew Gordon, ETR's financial expert, is the editor
of our new investment service, The
Wealth Advantage. Join now and you'll get
a free special report on Andrew's specific "finds" -
companies that have the very real potential of giving you
up to 1,000 percent on your investment.]
"Practice
does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect."
-
Vince Lombardi
Practice
Makes Perfect
By
Michael Masterson
Renato,
one of my Jiu Jitsu instructors, has convinced me to get
back into grappling in a kimono. "It will be hard at
first," he told me. "But after a few months, when
you go back to fighting without the gi, your game will be
better."
I
know he's right. But when he worked with me on it yesterday,
I felt like a white belt again. He was slapping arm bars,
foot locks, and collar chokes at the rate of one per minute.
At the end of my hour-long class, I was ready to cry.
I've
been practicing this sport for seven years now. But when
I put on that kimono, I regressed. Big time. Renato, who
competes at 145 pounds, was tossing me around like a rag
doll. And I outweigh him by 50 pounds.
I
know from experience, though, that if I keep on practicing,
I'll get better. A month from now, after I've relearned my
gi defenses and have regained a little confidence, I'll be
giving away fewer submissions. And one day, I'll give none.
I
have no great natural talent for submission wrestling, but
I am improving every day because I am willing to do what
it takes. Making myself a better wrestler is no tougher than
improving my Spanish language skills. I simply have to set
myself specific goals, put in the time to practice, and keep
at it until I succeed.
There
is almost nothing you can't accomplish so long as you are
willing to put in the time. This is something we've been
saying in ETR for years - and now there is a substantial
academic work on this subject that confirms our view.
K.
Anders Ericsson, a professor of psychology at Florida State
University, has studied the subject of "expert performance" pretty
much his entire professional life. Thirty years ago, he performed
an experiment in which he trained people to hear and repeat
series of numbers. Untaught subjects were able to remember
about seven digits in a row. After 20 hours of training,
their memory had improved to the point where they could remember
a 20-digit sequence. After 200 hours of training, they could
remember a sequence of more than 80 numbers.
Later
experiments in this area led Ericsson to conclude that whatever
innate capacity a person might have for remembering, that's
nothing compared to how much he can learn by practice.
All
of Ericsson's research and findings have been put together
in an 800-page book called The
Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance that
will be published in July. The bottom line: "Talent
is highly overrated."
Do
what you want to do, Ericsson advises. Even if that means
pursuing something for which you have no evident talent. "A
lot of people believe there are some inherent limits they
were born with," Ericsson told The New
York Times. "But there is surprisingly little hard
evidence that anyone could attain any kind of exceptional
performance without spending a lot of time perfecting it."
That
doesn't mean all people have equal potential. Some people
- like my neighbor's child (who is singing opera at age nine)
or Renato - seem to be "hard wired" at birth with
a facility for certain skills. But in order to realize their
potential, they will have to put in many hours of practice.
And if they don't, they can easily be surpassed by someone
who has no natural talent.
That's
one of the important messages in Ericsson's book: Anyone
can learn to be good at pretty much anything so long as he
has the time and tenacity to practice doing it.
Of
course, it can't be just any sort of practice, Ericsson warns.
It must be what he calls "deliberate practice."
Deliberate
practice involves more than repeating a specific task. To
achieve the kind of expert performance we're talking about:
1.
You have to set specific goals.
2. You have to get immediate feedback on your efforts.
3. You have to concentrate on technique as outcome.
As
I said, this confirms what we've been saying in ETR for years.
1.
Setting specific goals
As
Charlie Byrne said in Message
#1477, the more specific your goal is, the more
likely you will be to achieve it. In The
Success Principles, author Jack Canfield
explains how to set ultra-specific goals:
*
Instead of "I want a new oceanfront house," say "I'll
own a 4,000 sq. ft. house in Malibu by April 30, 2007."
*
Instead of "I'm desperate to lose some weight," say "I'll
weigh 185 lbs. by 5 p.m. Jan. 1, 2007."
*
Instead of "I need to treat my employees better," say "I
will acknowledge at least six employees for their contributions
to the department by 5 p.m. this Friday."
2.
Getting immediate feedback on your efforts
Getting
feedback usually means working with a teacher. We've talked
about this in past ETR messages about mastering skills. Expert
teachers help you in two ways: They chart a course of instruction
for you to follow, they correct you every time you veer off
course, and they pretty much force you to keep track of your
progress.
Getting
expert help when you are learning a new skill will shorten
your learning curve dramatically and thus significantly reduce
the time (and sometimes money) you have to invest in it.
It will also greatly reduce the frustration that comes with
learning anything new - and that might keep you from giving
up.
In Message
#1559, I explained that a quality learning
program can take you a long way toward acquiring the
financially valuable skill of your choice. And I said
that you can accelerate your progress by spending several
months or a year working at the feet of a master.
The
very best athletes, entertainers, and business leaders all
have someone in their corner that they can go to for advice,
leadership, and teaching. So, if you don't already have one,
make it a goal to find a mentor who will help fine-tune your
game, hold you accountable, and who is not afraid to criticize
when necessary.
3.
Concentrating on technique as outcome
This
is a subtle qualification. What it means - I think - is that,
in practicing a skill, you should concentrate on the correct
execution of that skill and not so much on the rewards you
will enjoy once the skill is fully mastered. In other words,
the reward for accomplishing any specific technique should
be the psychological satisfaction of knowing that you've
mastered it.
This
approach makes sense. It is, more or less, how behavior modification
specialists work. And we talked about it in Message
#102: "The Jazz Master's Secret."
The
jazz master was blues guitarist Howard Roberts, who claimed
that the secret of his virtuosity was to "never practice
a mistake." His theory was that any learning is the
biological process of creating neural networks in the brain.
Every perfect repetition beats a good path - one that you
can travel on later. Every incorrect repetition beats a parallel
but incorrect path - one that you can easily slide onto if
you aren't careful. The more you practice the right moves,
the deeper the memory path. The trick is to make the correct
paths as deep as possible and the incorrect paths shallow
or nonexistent.
Today's
Action Plan
Don't
let anyone (including that doubting Thomas in your head)
tell you that you can't become very good at anything.
If you want it badly enough, you can do it.
By "deliberately practicing" a skill long enough,
you will achieve a solid level of competence. As I've said
many times in ETR, I figure that takes about 1,000 hours -
though you can cut it down to 600 or 700 hours if you have
a good teacher. Practice longer (2,000 to 4,000 hours longer)
and you can become a true master - someone who performs that
skill better than almost everybody, including those who may
have had a natural gift but never worked very hard to develop
it.
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The
Edge You Need to Pull Ahead of the Investment Pack
Money
Insight is
making a habit of beating the herd to the punch.
And if you'll take just five minutes a week to read
it, you will automatically gain the edge you need
to pull ahead and stay ahead of the pack.
Every
week Money Insight digs deep into little known investment
trends that are changing the investment landscape as we know
it. Silver... gold... alternative energy... emerging technology... income
investments... boring old blue chips. It doesn't matter what
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Good
investing,
Charles Delvalle
Reader
Feedback: "I love your newsletter!"
Thanks!
I love your newsletter! I save it to read when I have extra
time, and savor the content and new vocabulary words. Keep
up your great work - thanks for the inspiration!
Kathleen
Carlyon
Basking Ridge, NJ
Green
Tea for Prostate Health
By
Jon Herring
Asian
cultures have promoted the many health benefits of green
tea for thousands of years. In the last decade, modern science
has been catching up. Hundreds of studies now confirm that
you should be drinking a few cups of green tea every day.
And two recent studies show that it provides particularly
powerful prostate protection. (Say that three times
fast!)
Italian
researchers studied 62 men with a pre-cancerous prostate
condition. (Normally, this condition would result in cancer
in 30 percent of cases.) Half the men were given a placebo,
while half consumed green tea extract daily. In the placebo
group, 9 out of 30 men developed cancer. In the green tea
group, only 1 out of 32 developed the disease. This is consistent
with the results of an Australian study of Chinese men which
found that those who consumed the most green tea were two-thirds
less likely to develop prostate cancer.
You
can buy organic green tea and green tea extract at any health
food store.
ETR
Insider Report: A Full Week of ETR!
By
Suzanne Richardson
We
first mentioned the idea in Message
#1697 ...
We
got piles of e-mails from our readers on the subject ...
And
now, finally, this Sunday, June 4, will mark the launch of
ETR's new Sunday edition!
If
you sometimes get so swamped at work that you just don't
get a chance to read every issue of ETR, now you'll be able
to quickly scan the Sunday Week in Review to find the articles
that pique your interest most.
Think
of it as a mini-index of the week's articles. No more searching
through the archives for the Bob Bly piece you want to read
again ... or the Paul Lawrence program you want to forward
to your sister. Now you'll have the whole week, right in
front of you.
We're
very excited about adding the Sunday Week in Review to the
ETR line-up. Take a look at it ... and let us know what else
we can do to improve ETR at ReaderFeedback@gmail.com.
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Word
to the Wise: Importunate
Something
that's "importunate" (im-POR-chuh-nit) is troublesomely
urgent or persistent.
Example
(as used by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson in The
Emperor's Embrace): "An emperor penguin
in captivity starved to death by feeding all his rations
- about six pounds of fish daily - to an importunate chick."
