Many of the things you think you know about investing are part of a mythology designed to make you bounce around between investment products. Modern day “conventional wisdom” just isn’t all that its cracked up to be. Concepts you worship are inaccurate; indices and averages you trust do not tell the complete story; the basic investment concepts still work — but Wall Street won’t tell you what they are.

It’s time to determine your investment IQ, here’s the deal:

Just take the True-False test below and send me an email list of the statements you feel are generally TRUE — please refrain from including any rationale or explanation. If you don’t get 80% or more correct — you should attend our FREE Web Workshop.

On April 21st, I will be hosting a FREE Workshop where my panel of experts will discuss the answers, the rationale, and the concepts in and around each of the statements. You will be able to participate, ask questions, whatever. No one will try to sell you any products.

Here we go: Generally speaking, are the following statements mostly True or mostly False? Note: you’ll do better if you research terms that you are unfamiliar with. Terms in “quotes” have very specific meanings in the Market Cycle Investment Management/Working Capital Model methodology.

1. The proper gauge of your Investment Portfolio Performance is the change in your market value vs. the S & P 500 or Dow Jones Industrial Average over the course of a calendar year.

2. Mutual Funds are a safer route to long-term investment success than trying to create your own portfolio of individual securities.

3. You really don’t need to worry about growing your “Base Income” until a year or so before you plan to retire. That’s the time to begin designing a safe income portfolio.

What’s Your Investment IQ? — for the rest of the test questions, workshop sign up instructions, etc, go to:

http://kiawahgolfinvestmentseminars.net/Inv/index.cfm/5641

Second, rates have been kept artificially low, to among other things, allow the big banks to make tens of billions (and costing savers tens of billions). Those savers have not been reimbursed for the losses caused by the big banks.

And third if I gamble with money from my company and win my bet on the Super Bowl and then put the money back, I am still not innocent. Just because many of the big banks have paid back the money they were given directly by taxpayers does not mean they didn’t get huge benefits from the government. Pretending they are not bad guys because after ruining the economy, costing millions of people their jobs and savings, getting many benefits from the government, they then pay back the direct cash payments is not accurate.

Now if you don’t believe they should be subject to a special tax that is perfectly fine. It just isn’t accurate to say they are the not the “bad guys.” It is silly that we allowed non-banks to become “banks” and take billions of taxpayers dollars. And Fannie and Freddie are huge problems that we have failed to address, sadly.

The tax can also become part of the system. It is a much more natural fit than the special favors granted the non “bad guys.” Those companies would all be out of business today. It is perfectly in line with economic theory to have taxes to deal with negative externalities.

Create cigarettes in a manner that lessens the chance of starting a fire in your home…hmm…sounds good but:

The leading cause of house fires in the USA is COOKING!!!

How can the FDA put regulations on home cooking??? Force all of us to dine out???

When will common sense enter the minds of our elected officials???

I’m 50 years old so I doubt I’ll see it in my lifetime…

BTW, if carpet glue in cigarette paper snuffs out the potential for a house fire then I’m sure that the FDA will soon be sticking their nose in residential building codes in that all new homes will be glued together instead of the usual “nail the sticks together” method…

Seems a bit foolish…doesn’t it?

I have feared for a long time that the cigarette laws (not smoking in bars, etc.) have been nothing but a trial balloon for controlling people. Now I’m certain of it.

I have read on some sites that some are blaming the right, some blame the left. Believe me…this is all about the money.

So buy your electronic smoking machines if you want.
Me, I’ll keep rolling.
How ridiculous…rise up people!

Pavlov’s dog comes to mind…

Sure, Buffett has risk, but his company Berkshire Hathaway had a TON of cash throughout the economic crisis, held stable businesses, and was in no danger during the whole fiasco. While the companies he criticized for engaging in excessive risk all crashed and burned during the economic meltdown, Buffett used his company’s excessively defensive liquidity to help bail some of them out, like Goldman Sachs and GE.

So his risk was so under control that even during the very worst of times, he was the one putting out his hand to bring others back from destruction.