During my 30 years as an investor, I've developed five tools that demonstrate how to profit from market volatility. And today I want to share them with you.
With the Nasdaq Composite Index - and tech stocks in general - going through a turbulent stretch of their own, these five rules will help keep you from making mistakes.
You literally can't afford not to read this...
It was quickly becoming OPEC's worst nightmare: By the mid-1980s, oil prices had begun to collapse.
What's more, renegade cartel members were selling more oil than their monthly quotas allowed, which merely made a bad situation even worse.
Ordinarily, that was a point when the Saudis usually would step in and cut their own exports.
But by then, the pricing situation had become untenable. Instead, the Saudis embarked on a bold new strategy.
First, they opened up their own spigots and flooded the market with crude. This taught those recalcitrant OPEC members a big lesson about lost revenues.
Second, they also introduced a "netback" pricing strategy that proved to be far more important - both for them and today's energy investors.
This new strategy considered the entire pricing sequence, using refinery margins (the difference in cost between processing and prices on the wholesale level) as a measure of prices upstream and downstream.
Now, 28 years later, the same netback strategy has made a comeback that has handed us a clear path to profits - even during periods of high volatility.
Here's how this strategy works... Full Story
Many investors are understandably nervous when it comes to what the markets will do this week. Some are downright agitated.
My take? Keep calm.
The markets are doing what they need to be doing right now. The big swings we're experiencing lately are not a sign that the markets are broken. Far from it.
The stock market today is down more than 200 points as China fears trigger a global sell off.
In mid-morning trading, the Dow dived 205.75, 1.39%, to 14,593.65. The S&P 500 slumped 25.78, 1.62%, to 1,566.65. The Nasdaq slid 50.78, 1.51%, to 3,306.47. The Dow and S&P are now off some 5% and 6% respectively from their all-time highs reached earlier this year.
Asian markets were clobbered Monday and European markets melted on increasing fears of a liquidity crunch in China. Major Euro indexes, off roughly 10% from their April highs, are officially in bear territory.
Today's moves continue the rollercoaster ride U.S. equities were on last week, with the Dow shedding 560 points, or 3.66%, over Wednesday and Thursday.
The blue-chip benchmark finished at 14,799.40, down 1.8% for the week, its worst week since April 19. The S&P 500 fared worse, slumping 2.1% last week to end at 1,592.43. The Nasdaq ended at 3,357.25, for a weekly loss of 1.9%.
The VIX, or the CBOE Volatility Index, soared 10.2% last week, ending at 19. Wall Street's "fear gauge" has risen four of the past five weeks, ever since Fed Chief Ben Bernanke's first mumblings about a probable winding down of stimulus.
Monday morning, the VIX jumped 2.14, or 11.23%, to 21.04, its highest level of the year.
Markets were goosed Friday after The Wall Street Journal's Fed watcher Jon Hilsenrath wrote that investors may be misreading optimistic messages sent by the Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke as hawkish.
Also, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) analysts said their top recommendation for 2013 is still to buy stocks and sell bonds.
"We continue to expect the index [S&P] will close the year at 1,750, a rise of approximately 10% from today's top level. However, median historical drawdown episodes suggest at some point during the next six-months that the S&P may decline to mid-1,500s before resounding to our year-end target," Goldman's analysts wrote.
Further giving stocks a lift was a bullish statement to CNBC from renowned hedge fund manager David Tepper, founder of Appaloosa Management: "All the concerns in the markets is because the Fed sees the economy stronger in the future. In fact, their forecast shows that they will wait until a lower unemployment rate (closer to 6% than 6.5) to raise interest rates. So they are a bit easier on the front...I obviously thought they should start to taper. [But] the bottom line when the dust settles [is that the] only one place to be [is] stocks."
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