As individuals and investors, there is a desire to try to understand different viewpoints and if it directly relates to making money, is there something to be gained? In US politics President Trump either believes or leans to believing conspiracies theories (and he is the President of the government). While those with a cynical eye find it hard to justify every conspiracy (even though all have some level of truth among the theories, some such as the JFK single bullet theory seem to have more truth about them) many of the conspiracies seem to be out there.

A couple of years ago, Jonathan Kay wrote a book called Among the Truthers published by HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2011 in an effort to understand who and why Truthers are. In turns out the vast majority are the average daily folks who use the knowledge found on the internet and are able to present their ideas. Some ideas are great, some are out there, and in a free country all ideas are good. Similar in the investing world some ideas are great, some are out there but ideas are welcomed. Every once in a while, you will hear or see someone who has a magic system to beat the market, in reality the easy way to beat the system is to buy an index fund and hold it for years. The index fund will trend upwards because the index makers discard the dogs and replace them with stars every 6 months and thus over the years the index goes up. If you can regularly sell the worse performing stocks and replace them with stars, then over the long run you will make money.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, another tried and true method is over the long term buy profitable companies which does three things. One profitable companies stocks fluctuate but generally they stay go up over the years; Two the number one rule in investing is try not to lose money – even if the market fluctuates profitable companies tend to move in an upward direction over the long term; and three even as the market fluctuates it is good to receive money on a regular basis or a dividend. Similarly to the world of truthers, where people spend endless hours on their theories, it is good to have ideas and spend time on them. It is good to have ideas – some will be great, some will not be and hopefully somewhere you will learn which is which. In investing, the idea is not to lose money so that should help you in figuring out what a good idea is and is the time is ripe for it to make money for you.

There are more questions than answers, till next time – to raising questions.