Good Advice From Zacks

[dan_s]

This is from a weekly newsletter I get from Zacks.

"First and foremost, I have learned over many years it never makes sense to time the market. It does not work. It does not work if you react to newsletters, earnings trends, IPO activity levels, discounted cash flow models, P/E multiples, gurus, magazine articles, tea leaves or sunspots.
In fact, one of the few metrics that does seem to have some value in terms of predicting future market performance is interestingly enough, tracking what Wall Street investment strategists—the analysts who set equity and fixed-income exposure of brokerage firm model portfolios—are recommending to investors and promptly do the opposite. The reason this methodology may work is that by the time multiple strategists are calling for the market to go in a certain direction, the information they're responding to is already reflected in stock prices. As a result, the market surprises by reacting to new information and moves in the opposite direction."