Boost Your Profits and Cut Your Losses in 90 Seconds... or Less

The Dow hit a record high right out of the gate on Wednesday, and that's got investors wondering if there's a correction lurking in the wings.

With all the political turmoil at hand over healthcare, taxes, and more, many are rightly concerned that a downturn could set them back years.

What they're missing is that times like the present are loaded with pure, unadulterated profit potential.

...if you understand the Total Wealth Tactic I'm going to share with you today.

Before I tell you what it is, though, let me say that the tactic we're going to discuss right now is one of the most powerful of all the Total Wealth Tactics we've got at our disposal.

What's more, it's so simple anybody can use it to boost returns and reduce losses - in 90 seconds or less.

Ready to get started?

90 Seconds Could Make or Break Your Profits

People ask me all the time how much time they have to put into investing to make the process "worth it," and they nearly fall over every time they hear my answer...

"...about 90 seconds."

That's about how long it will take you to "rebalance" your portfolio.

If you've just joined us, rebalancing is one of the single most powerful yet easy-to-use Total Wealth Tactics available to individual investors today.

There are five simple reasons I say so:

  1. You can rebalance anytime
  2. You can lock in profits immediately
  3. You minimize risk every time you rebalance
  4. You maximize upside potential for years to come
  5. You can do it easily... in about 90 seconds

Simply put, rebalancing is a strategy that ensures your money is working the way you want and, perhaps most importantly, that every dollar you have in the markets is aligned with your individual risk tolerance, objectives, and financial aspirations. Not Wall Street's.

Rebalancing: What It Means, How It Works, and Why It's Profitable

Let's say you have a $100,000 portfolio that's invested 50%-40%-10% in stocks, bonds, and speculative investments, respectively. That means you'd have $50,000 in stocks, $40,000 in bonds and another $10,000 in speculative investments.

A year from now, let's suppose that stocks have appreciated 10% and bonds have lost 12% because the Fed got aggressive. Let's also say you hit the big time with your speculative play and that it's up 100%.

That means your $100,000, 50-40-10 portfolio would now be worth $110,000 and the allocation would be more like 50%-31.8%-18.2%.

To get back to your targeted 50-40-10 risk profile, you'd rebalance by selling $9,000 worth of your speculative investments and buying a corresponding $9,000 worth of bonds using the proceeds, assuming you had no new money to invest.

tw-graph-1

This is where most investors go off the rails.

They don't see a problem with letting their winners "ride." That's fine if you're in a Las Vegas casino and want to leave your money on the table even as you continue to bet you won't lose it, but that strategy is totally unsuited to today's financial markets. Every dollar you earn if you don't rebalance means you're taking on more risk.

Figure 1 - Fidelity Investments
Source: Fidelity Investments

This is where many investors found themselves coming into the dot-bomb crash of late 1999/2000 and the financial crisis of 2008. They thought they were doing great. What they didn't realize was how concentrated their risk was becoming... in the very stocks that were making them gobs of money.

You can see that very clearly in orange. Note how much higher the risk associated with letting things ride became in 2000 and in 2007... right before the bottom fell out and they got shellacked. Contrast that with the much lower risk of a constantly rebalanced portfolio in blue.

Let's Get Back to Our Example...

Every day you're not in the markets is a day of lost opportunity, which is why, in true Total Wealth style, we've talked about the importance of constantly investing in good times and in bad. As I am fond of saying, "you have to be 'in' to win."

Invest for one day and you've got approximately a 54% probability of making money in the stock markets. Invest for a year and that number jumps to around 68%.

But leave your money alone for a full decade and the probabilities rise to a smile-inducing 87%, according to Dan Wiener and Jeff DeMaso of the Independent Advisor for Vanguard Investors, who based their analysis on returns from 1927 to 2014.

So let's rerun those numbers assuming you're going to add an additional $10,000 to your investments as you rebalance.

That means you'll be buying $5,000 more stock, buying another $13,000 worth of bonds, and selling $8,000 worth of speculative investments to get back to your perfect 50-40-10 portfolio allocation.

tw-graph-3

Again, the thinking here is pretty simple.

Rebalancing ensures you are capturing profits and buying more of whatever's on sale. Over time this can significantly reduce portfolio volatility and boost your returns.

By how much?

There's extensive research showing that the advantage can be anything from a few percent a year to 300% or more over time. The answer, like many things, depends on your personal circumstances, the time you leave your money invested, and in how you've allocated it.

But, and this is very important, the principles are the same no matter how much or how little money you have in play. That's why rebalancing is so very important to understand and to get right.

Here's a study from Forbes highlighting the performance of two hypothetical $10,000 portfolios starting in 1985 and ending in 2010. Both use a 60/40 mix of stocks and bonds based on the S&P 500 Index and the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index. The only difference is that the blue portfolio was rebalanced annually while the orange portfolio was never rebalanced.

As you can see, the rebalanced portfolio was worth just over $97,000 at the end of the study. That's a total return of 870%. The un-rebalanced portfolio was worth only $88,980 and resulted in a total return of 789%.

Here's the real kicker, though.

Let me show you what can happen when you don't rebalance.

This catches a lot of people by surprise...

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Figure 2 - Kitces.com
Source: Kitces.com

Put very bluntly, not rebalancing periodically is so damaging that it can lead to dramatically worse results over time even if there are other investment decision rules in place, according to my research and that of Michael Kitces, a partner for Pinnacle Advisory Group, a private wealth management firm overseeing more than $1.8 billion of client assets.

Are there some wrinkles?

Sure.

For one thing, there's more than one way to rebalance.

I've highlighted a simple percentage-based method today, but you could introduce variables related to trade risk, trading method, parity, or any number of other institutional grade concepts if you wanted. For all but the most sophisticated individuals, that's overkill, though.

The key to rebalancing successfully is to 1) use predetermined thresholds like the 50-40-10 portfolio I advocate in the Money Map Report and 2) rebalance consistently when it gets out of line.

For another, there's a lot of debate about how often to rebalance.

The key to making huge profits is finding "must-have" companies that fall into Keith's "Unstoppable Trends" – six powerful trends backed by trillions of dollars that Washington cannot derail, the Fed cannot meddle with, and Wall Street cannot hijack. Any investor can use this strategy to beat the market, especially with Keith showing the way. Just click here to get his Total Wealth research, including all of his trends, tactics, and wealth-building reports. It's absolutely free.

I think keeping things simple is easiest and most effective. Very few investors have the discipline needed to realign their holdings monthly or even quarterly. That's why I'm a big fan of picking a date you'll remember, like your birthday, and rebalancing annually.

There can be tax considerations, too.

That's why, if possible, you want to rebalance within retirement accounts or using tax advantaged investments to avoid paying Uncle Sam any more than you legally have to.

Even further, you can always work with a financial advisor or accountant to combine rebalancing with tax-smart moves that pair gains with losses that are then applied against realized capital gains or ordinary income.

In closing, let me leave you with a thought.

There are a lot of people who believe that the markets are at record highs right now and that, therefore, there's nothing to buy.

Don't fall for it.

The risks of a correction are mounting, which is exactly why you want to rebalance and why doing so can be so very powerful.

Besides, should a correction hit, you'll know exactly what to buy no matter what happens next.

And exactly how much, too.

Ten Triple-Digit Winners This Year… and Counting

Keith Fitz-Gerald's Money Map Report subscribers who have followed along with his recommendations are now sitting on 10 triple-digit winners this year – including a 201.68% return and 132.35% gain that closed out in the same week.

Each week, Keith shows everyday Americans how to tap into the world's biggest high-profit trends, ahead of the crowd.

There's nothing complicated or overly risky – and no guesswork involved.

Right now he's looking at another double-your-money opportunity, and there's still time to get in on it. Find out how to subscribe and access all of Keith's recommendations by clicking here now.

The post Boost Your Profits and Cut Your Losses in 90 Seconds... or Less appeared first on Total Wealth.

About the Author

Keith is a seasoned market analyst and professional trader with more than 37 years of global experience. He is one of very few experts to correctly see both the dot.bomb crisis and the ongoing financial crisis coming ahead of time - and one of even fewer to help millions of investors around the world successfully navigate them both. Forbes hailed him as a "Market Visionary." He is a regular on FOX Business News and Yahoo! Finance, and his observations have been featured in Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, and MarketWatch. Keith previously led The Money Map Report, Money Map's flagship newsletter, as Chief Investment Strategist, from 20007 to 2020. Keith holds a BS in management and finance from Skidmore College and an MS in international finance (with a focus on Japanese business science) from Chaminade University. He regularly travels the world in search of investment opportunities others don't yet see or understand.

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