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Making Money From Investing

Making money from investing is the goal of all successful investors. On that, I think everyone agrees. Investors that enjoy the most success obsess over the details; what to buy, how much to buy, when to buy it, when to sell it.

Why? Because they're relentlessly trying to improve performance. It’s not enough to just monitor your personal finances or the market. You need to translate that knowledge into action and assess your results.

Remember those investing principles? There are two, in particular, that are directly related to this part of your process:

6th Principle of Investing Safely
Continually measure the performance of your plan or system; there is always something that can be improved.

9th Principle of Investing Safely
Improving your returns requires improving your system; tools alone will not improve your profits

It's with those two principles in mind that spend time each year examining the outlook, the opportunities and challenges that come with translating signals into trades, as well as refinements that can improve future performance.

2020 Performance Overview

Here are the returns from January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020 for the S&P500 Index ($SPX) using "Buy & Hold" and the Stock Market Outlook:

Trading System Performance Comparison

Trading System Performance Comparison

2015-2020 Total Return

Here are the returns from January 1, 2015 through December 31, 2020 for the S&P500 Index ($SPX) using "Buy & Hold" and the Stock Market Outlook:

Trading System Performance Comparison

Trading System Performance Comparison

Past Reviews

Even though past performance is no guarantee of future returns, it's the only performance we can use to judge our effectiveness. With that in mind, here are the past reviews for the Stock Market Outlook:

And remember: All models are wrong, but some are useful. The objective here is to give readers readers an example of systematically using an investing process, including translating signals, executing trades, reviewing performance and adjusting methodologies. Providing this analysis (which mimics what I do personally) shows you the concept of a safe investing processes in action.