Ted Allrich is the founder of The Online Investor and author of the just released book: Comfort Zone Investing: Build Wealth And Sleep Well At Night. In this weekly column, he'll offer advice to investors who are just getting started.
With a seemingly bottomless stock market that has a day or two of great rallies, it's a good time to review what investing is and what it isn't, how to start and stay with an investment, and other essentials that help investors weather this storm.
First, investing is not done with any money that you need within a known time period. If you even think you will need a certain amount of money anytime within three years (I prefer to think of five years because of the market's tendency to overdo everything, bad as well as good), then you don't want that particular money in the market. Most often, just when you need it, the value of your investment will be down, and you'll have to take a loss.
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