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2021-09-07

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3 Golden Rules On How To Invest At All-Time Highs

Summary Markets continue to reach new all-time highs each week and have not seen a notable correcti

3 Golden Rules On How To Invest At All-Time Highs

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{"i18n":{"language":"en_US"},"data":{"magic":2,"id":817268309,"tweetId":"817268309","gmtCreate":1630970447501,"gmtModify":1676530428564,"author":{"id":3554925654049540,"idStr":"3554925654049540","authorId":3554925654049540,"authorIdStr":"3554925654049540","name":"EagerTigger","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"userType":1,"introduction":"","boolIsFan":false,"boolIsHead":false,"crmLevel":6,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"fanSize":0,"starInvestorFlag":false},"themes":[],"images":[],"coverImages":[],"extraTitle":"","html":"<html><head></head><body>Interesting</body></html>","htmlText":"<html><head></head><body>Interesting</body></html>","text":"Interesting","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/817268309","repostId":1186375251,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1186375251","pubTimestamp":1630909435,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1186375251?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-09-06 14:23","market":"us","language":"en","title":"3 Golden Rules On How To Invest At All-Time Highs","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1186375251","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nMarkets continue to reach new all-time highs each week and have not seen a notable correcti","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>Markets continue to reach new all-time highs each week and have not seen a notable correction in over 200 trading days.</li>\n <li>As markets are rallying, many investors are starting to rest on their laurels while investment decisions at all-time highs are actually more important than ever.</li>\n <li>What should you be aware of in today's market? Should you sell out at these overvalued prices or can you still generate great returns by buying today?</li>\n <li>In this article, I will share my three golden rules on how to invest at all-time highs like today. This information will be very valuable for your future wealth generation in the market.</li>\n</ul>\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9f5f0c9f1aacfbc6d8c78d0e84da5fc9\" tg-width=\"1536\" tg-height=\"878\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">phive2015/iStock via Getty Images\nThe stock market has been on a rampage in 2021. At the end of August, the S&amp;P 500 index (SPY) gained 20.4% year-to-date. Interestingly, the index has been trading in a very tight upward range and has not seen a 5% correction for 208 trading days. While most investors don't see this as an anomaly, it actually is. Both events have only occurred 7 times before in stock market history. We are clearly living in abnormal times.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c58ccc72065c84083443d6be7f03482a\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"322\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Insider Opportunities with Tradingview\nEach day it is important to think thoroughly about the investment decisions you make. Above all, all purchases or sales will impact your future wealth accumulation in the market.\nHowever, during extreme rallies like today it is twice as important to reflect on your investment decisions. Ask that to investors who took high risks during the dot-com bubble or panic sold during the Covid-19 crash. That undoubtedly had an immense impact on their long-term returns.\nThe importance of investment decisions today for your long-term returns is why I chose to write about my three golden rules on how to invest at all-time highs. How should you approach today's market and what should you be aware of? Should you sell out at these overvalued prices and wait for a correction to take place or can you still generate great returns when buying at these levels? The answers to these one-million-dollar questions will be provided in this article.\n1. Don't get caught by greediness\nLet's start off with the most important rule. Avoid greediness.\nAccording to JPMorgan, over the past 20 years, the average investor reached an annual return of only 2.9%. As such, they significantly underperformed the general market as the S&amp;P 500 yielded an annual 7.5% return during this time frame.\nThe single most important reason for this retail investor underperformance? Emotional human behavior.\nThe average investor is getting influenced heavily by media headlines, stock prices movements and behavior from other investors.\nToday, we reached an extremely bullish stock market environment. Last earnings season has been one of the greatest in stock market history. The S&amp;P 500 EPS rose by 94.5% YoY and 86.1% of its constituents beat analyst estimates.\nAs a consequence of this bullish environment, analysts are significantly raising their estimates for the next quarters. They now expect EPS to rise sharply to $217.96 by the end of 2022, which is a significant recovery from the pre-pandemic high of $157.12. Such a recovery looks to be optimistic as it took 7-12 years in the past economic cycles to achieve this:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1accc921d16b11ec13ed94686b9cfe75\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"465\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Insider Opportunities based on S&amp;P Global data; adjusted EPS is used\nWill earnings really continue this very strong recovery over the coming quarters or are analysts perhaps getting too greedy with their assumptions?\nIt wouldn't be the first time if they were too greedy. During the dot-com bubble for example, they were caught by their emotions as well. The '90s was an abnormally strong decade in terms of earnings growth for the S&amp;P 500. As such, analysts totally forgot that downward cycles exist as well. They increased their annual EPS growth guidance to a staggering 15% for the five years following 2000. According to them, this high growth rate justified the record P/E multiples stocks were trading at and many investors got tricked into that story.\nWhat happened afterwards? The economy didn't boom, it fell into a recession which took 3 years to recover from. Earnings in 2003 were almost 50% lower than what analysts had been predicting in 2000.\nAs markets were priced to analyst expectations instead of taking into account a possible downturn, the S&amp;P 500 crashed and took 7 years to recover.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0081f4a9c3ee43b20684f113cb04ef9c\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"467\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Insider Opportunities based on S&amp;P Global data and Yardeni; adjusted EPS is used\nLet's get back to today... The P/E of the S&amp;P 500 currently stands at 25.4x, which is extremely high compared to historical levels. This gets justified by the common belief that earnings will continue rising significantly. As such, the ratio would fall to an acceptable 20.7x by the end of 2022.\nNow ask yourself how likely it is that earnings growth will continue to grow at higher levels than the historical average over the coming quarters.\nInterest rates are already at 0%. The money printer is running out of paper. Federal debt levels are hitting their ceilings. Pent-up demand and stimuli cheques already led to record-high consumer spending over the past quarters.\nMaybe, just maybe, analysts are being too greedy with their assumptions? Maybe the recent economic recovery is unsustainable and set to cool down? Maybe my assumptions (grey line) are much more likely than what the market is predicting (red line)? If so, the market is trading at a fwd 2022 P/E of 23.6x, which is really expensive.\nI'm not sure this will happen, nobody is. But it sure as hell is a probability.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f61310c3c851b181ceb1fb3cc8862fdb\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"465\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Insider Opportunities based on S&amp;P Global data and Yardeni; adjusted EPS is used\nThis greediness also gets reflected in the charts. As you can see in the chart below, a bull market can be split into four cycles. Strong growth, bear trap, media attention and greed.\nInterestingly, the 2013-2021 bull market is playing out almost identically as the 1994-2000 bull market. At this moment, the Nasdaq Index (QQQ) looks to be ready to start the last extreme greed phase. The media is approaching the recent rally as \"the new normal\" and investors are FOMO buying heavily because stocks \"can only go up\". As such, it is likely that the Nasdaq will rise close to $20,000 in the last months of 2021.\nAs a long-term investor, it is extremely important to understand these dynamics. You will probably feel the urge to go all-in in risky assets as well. However, getting greedy during this phase could be a major threat for your long term returns as it will likely be followed by a major bear market.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c783bf0cff4c410846a27c2dc8c180b1\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"499\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Insider Opportunities with Tradingview\nHuman behavior makes it extremely challenging to not get distracted by market sentiment. If you can keep an objective view on markets, it will benefit your returns drastically.\n2. Keep investing, there are always opportunities\nIn short, rule #1 says that your decisions should never be led by emotions and that you should keep focusing on underlying fundamentals. As the market is getting greedy today and valuations reach extreme levels it implies that you should start selling stocks and hold a lot of cash, right?\nNot really... You know, a wise man once said the following:\n<blockquote>\n It's a market of stocks, not a stock market.\n</blockquote>\nI'm not entirely sure who came up with it. But it must be a wise man, for sure.\nWhat does it mean? Look, many retail investors buy/sell stocks based on how the outlook for the general market looks like. If they don't trust the markets, they will be reluctant to invest, no matter what.\nThat's not a great way of looking at markets. There are almost 4,000 stocks available and there will always be interesting investment opportunities to generate great returns, no matter how the market evolves.\nIn a generally overvalued market it gets increasingly challenging to find undervalued stocks, but certainly not impossible. Ask Warren Buffett. In 2000, the most overvalued stock market in history, his investment vehicle Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B) kept buying high-quality, undervalued assets. His dedication paid off with an impressive return of 47% five years after the dot-com peak compared to -39% for the Nasdaq index.\nThe Russell 2000 (IWM), an index reflecting US small caps, was very attractive during the dot-com bubble as well, trading at a P/E of 16x (vs 24x for large caps) going into 2000. Those who invested in this undervalued asset class during the bubble also generated very solid returns. Those who were able to pick out the greatest small caps were a lot happier than those who got tricked into overhyped tech stocks, I can imagine.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c713a296e819a255b3be8ac6e504033d\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"450\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Data by YCharts\nSo what should you do today? I would suggest re-evaluating all your portfolio holdings. Weigh their valuation compared to earnings 3 years from now, when Covid-19 disruptions (stimuli, pent-up demand, etc.) are gone. Be conservative with your assumptions. If a stock is significantly overvalued compared to those assumptions, don't be greedy and sell out the position.\nA great example is Apple Inc. (AAPL), one of the most popular stocks this year. As a consequence of its very strong financials (revenue grew 36.4% last quarter), its P/E ratio more than doubled over the past two years to 30x. It is important to understand that its recent growth primarily accelerated due to unsustainable drivers such as the several rounds of stimuli cheques. Once this fades away, Apple's growth is likely to fall back to single digits (or might even go negative in the short term) and returns would be very weak going forward.\nDon't keep all that freed up capital in cash, especially in the current inflationary environment. There are still opportunities to re-invest that money. In my opinion, small caps are the most attractive asset class today just like they were in 2000. After its recent underperformance, the Russell 2000 (representing all US small caps) is trading at a P/E of 15.6x today. This is much lower than both the S&amp;P 500 Index and its historical average. There are plenty of small-cap opportunities out there which will generate great returns going forward.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2f132a93975b3b7fef86aff21c0b49bb\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"250\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Yardeni\n3. Adopt a proven investment strategy to pick stocks\nRule #1 and #2 look very good on paper, but are very hard to execute in reality. When push comes to shove, it's very tough to deny your emotions and to find interesting investment opportunities in an overvalued market.\nThat's where #3 comes into play: adopt a proven investment strategy.\nWith the upcoming challenges in the stock market, I believe it has never been as important as today to follow a pre-determined strategy on which you can rely during a highly uncertain market environment. If you use a strategy which worked well in the past, you'll feel great in each market environment.\nThere are many strategies that could work for you, as long as you stick to it. We strongly believe that our under-appreciated strategy at Insider Opportunities will be very valuable in the coming years.\nTo find attractive investment opportunities, we follow insider purchases each day. Insiders are the CFOs, CEOs, board members, etc. who know their business better than anyone else in the market. If they see a disconnection between the share price and the business fundamentals, they can purchase shares to generate profits. You can follow the purchases of this so-called \"smart money\" on a daily basis through SEC filings or websites like openinsider.com.\nWe don't just follow up insider purchases. We created three algorithms based on more than a million of data points over the past decade to pick the greatest ones out of all insider purchases. As such, we stick to a pre-determined plan to only buy stocks that are attractive based on specific fundamentals, called \"golden picks\".\nIt worked tremendously in the past. Our back-test shows that the strategy generated annualized returns of 47.2% over the past decade, tripling the S&amp;P 500 index. Only in 2011 it slightly underperformed the market.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f05af9240a87a55641df0a7921ec0380\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"359\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Insider Opportunities\n\nWe firmly believe that this revolutionary strategy will continue generating wealth for us in the stock market, regardless of how the market performs. Find yourself a strict, proven strategy like ours on which you can rely during the upcoming uncertainties.\nConclusion: Do this at all-time highs\nMost stock market investors are resting on their laurels when all-time highs are being reached. Above all, nothing can go wrong in such a bullish market, right?\nNo, that's not how it works. Markets evolve in cycles and those who don't acknowledge the importance of adapting to these cycles will be struck at weak long-term returns.\nHow should you approach today's all-time highs to keep generating wealth going forward? Here are my three golden rules:\n<ol>\n <li>Don't get greedy.As a consequence of emotional behavior, you will want to take higher risks when markets are rallying. Never follow these emotions and always keep focused on the fundamentals.</li>\n <li>Keep being invested.Don't get reluctant to invest in stocks just because markets are getting overvalued. Acknowledge that it's a market of stocks, not a stock market. There are always great opportunities in each market environment. Today, they are mostly available in under-the-radar small caps.</li>\n <li>Adopt a proven strategy.Investing is not easy, especially when things are starting to move southwards. Adopting a strict, proven investment strategy can make life much easier and improve returns significantly.</li>\n</ol>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>3 Golden Rules On How To Invest At All-Time Highs</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\n3 Golden Rules On How To Invest At All-Time Highs\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-09-06 14:23 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4453541-3-golden-rules-on-how-to-invest-at-all-time-highs>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nMarkets continue to reach new all-time highs each week and have not seen a notable correction in over 200 trading days.\nAs markets are rallying, many investors are starting to rest on their ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4453541-3-golden-rules-on-how-to-invest-at-all-time-highs\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{".IXIC":"NASDAQ Composite",".SPX":"S&P 500 Index",".DJI":"道琼斯"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4453541-3-golden-rules-on-how-to-invest-at-all-time-highs","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1186375251","content_text":"Summary\n\nMarkets continue to reach new all-time highs each week and have not seen a notable correction in over 200 trading days.\nAs markets are rallying, many investors are starting to rest on their laurels while investment decisions at all-time highs are actually more important than ever.\nWhat should you be aware of in today's market? Should you sell out at these overvalued prices or can you still generate great returns by buying today?\nIn this article, I will share my three golden rules on how to invest at all-time highs like today. This information will be very valuable for your future wealth generation in the market.\n\nphive2015/iStock via Getty Images\nThe stock market has been on a rampage in 2021. At the end of August, the S&P 500 index (SPY) gained 20.4% year-to-date. Interestingly, the index has been trading in a very tight upward range and has not seen a 5% correction for 208 trading days. While most investors don't see this as an anomaly, it actually is. Both events have only occurred 7 times before in stock market history. We are clearly living in abnormal times.\nSource: Insider Opportunities with Tradingview\nEach day it is important to think thoroughly about the investment decisions you make. Above all, all purchases or sales will impact your future wealth accumulation in the market.\nHowever, during extreme rallies like today it is twice as important to reflect on your investment decisions. Ask that to investors who took high risks during the dot-com bubble or panic sold during the Covid-19 crash. That undoubtedly had an immense impact on their long-term returns.\nThe importance of investment decisions today for your long-term returns is why I chose to write about my three golden rules on how to invest at all-time highs. How should you approach today's market and what should you be aware of? Should you sell out at these overvalued prices and wait for a correction to take place or can you still generate great returns when buying at these levels? The answers to these one-million-dollar questions will be provided in this article.\n1. Don't get caught by greediness\nLet's start off with the most important rule. Avoid greediness.\nAccording to JPMorgan, over the past 20 years, the average investor reached an annual return of only 2.9%. As such, they significantly underperformed the general market as the S&P 500 yielded an annual 7.5% return during this time frame.\nThe single most important reason for this retail investor underperformance? Emotional human behavior.\nThe average investor is getting influenced heavily by media headlines, stock prices movements and behavior from other investors.\nToday, we reached an extremely bullish stock market environment. Last earnings season has been one of the greatest in stock market history. The S&P 500 EPS rose by 94.5% YoY and 86.1% of its constituents beat analyst estimates.\nAs a consequence of this bullish environment, analysts are significantly raising their estimates for the next quarters. They now expect EPS to rise sharply to $217.96 by the end of 2022, which is a significant recovery from the pre-pandemic high of $157.12. Such a recovery looks to be optimistic as it took 7-12 years in the past economic cycles to achieve this:\nSource: Insider Opportunities based on S&P Global data; adjusted EPS is used\nWill earnings really continue this very strong recovery over the coming quarters or are analysts perhaps getting too greedy with their assumptions?\nIt wouldn't be the first time if they were too greedy. During the dot-com bubble for example, they were caught by their emotions as well. The '90s was an abnormally strong decade in terms of earnings growth for the S&P 500. As such, analysts totally forgot that downward cycles exist as well. They increased their annual EPS growth guidance to a staggering 15% for the five years following 2000. According to them, this high growth rate justified the record P/E multiples stocks were trading at and many investors got tricked into that story.\nWhat happened afterwards? The economy didn't boom, it fell into a recession which took 3 years to recover from. Earnings in 2003 were almost 50% lower than what analysts had been predicting in 2000.\nAs markets were priced to analyst expectations instead of taking into account a possible downturn, the S&P 500 crashed and took 7 years to recover.\nSource: Insider Opportunities based on S&P Global data and Yardeni; adjusted EPS is used\nLet's get back to today... The P/E of the S&P 500 currently stands at 25.4x, which is extremely high compared to historical levels. This gets justified by the common belief that earnings will continue rising significantly. As such, the ratio would fall to an acceptable 20.7x by the end of 2022.\nNow ask yourself how likely it is that earnings growth will continue to grow at higher levels than the historical average over the coming quarters.\nInterest rates are already at 0%. The money printer is running out of paper. Federal debt levels are hitting their ceilings. Pent-up demand and stimuli cheques already led to record-high consumer spending over the past quarters.\nMaybe, just maybe, analysts are being too greedy with their assumptions? Maybe the recent economic recovery is unsustainable and set to cool down? Maybe my assumptions (grey line) are much more likely than what the market is predicting (red line)? If so, the market is trading at a fwd 2022 P/E of 23.6x, which is really expensive.\nI'm not sure this will happen, nobody is. But it sure as hell is a probability.\nSource: Insider Opportunities based on S&P Global data and Yardeni; adjusted EPS is used\nThis greediness also gets reflected in the charts. As you can see in the chart below, a bull market can be split into four cycles. Strong growth, bear trap, media attention and greed.\nInterestingly, the 2013-2021 bull market is playing out almost identically as the 1994-2000 bull market. At this moment, the Nasdaq Index (QQQ) looks to be ready to start the last extreme greed phase. The media is approaching the recent rally as \"the new normal\" and investors are FOMO buying heavily because stocks \"can only go up\". As such, it is likely that the Nasdaq will rise close to $20,000 in the last months of 2021.\nAs a long-term investor, it is extremely important to understand these dynamics. You will probably feel the urge to go all-in in risky assets as well. However, getting greedy during this phase could be a major threat for your long term returns as it will likely be followed by a major bear market.\nSource: Insider Opportunities with Tradingview\nHuman behavior makes it extremely challenging to not get distracted by market sentiment. If you can keep an objective view on markets, it will benefit your returns drastically.\n2. Keep investing, there are always opportunities\nIn short, rule #1 says that your decisions should never be led by emotions and that you should keep focusing on underlying fundamentals. As the market is getting greedy today and valuations reach extreme levels it implies that you should start selling stocks and hold a lot of cash, right?\nNot really... You know, a wise man once said the following:\n\nIt's a market of stocks, not a stock market.\n\nI'm not entirely sure who came up with it. But it must be a wise man, for sure.\nWhat does it mean? Look, many retail investors buy/sell stocks based on how the outlook for the general market looks like. If they don't trust the markets, they will be reluctant to invest, no matter what.\nThat's not a great way of looking at markets. There are almost 4,000 stocks available and there will always be interesting investment opportunities to generate great returns, no matter how the market evolves.\nIn a generally overvalued market it gets increasingly challenging to find undervalued stocks, but certainly not impossible. Ask Warren Buffett. In 2000, the most overvalued stock market in history, his investment vehicle Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B) kept buying high-quality, undervalued assets. His dedication paid off with an impressive return of 47% five years after the dot-com peak compared to -39% for the Nasdaq index.\nThe Russell 2000 (IWM), an index reflecting US small caps, was very attractive during the dot-com bubble as well, trading at a P/E of 16x (vs 24x for large caps) going into 2000. Those who invested in this undervalued asset class during the bubble also generated very solid returns. Those who were able to pick out the greatest small caps were a lot happier than those who got tricked into overhyped tech stocks, I can imagine.\nData by YCharts\nSo what should you do today? I would suggest re-evaluating all your portfolio holdings. Weigh their valuation compared to earnings 3 years from now, when Covid-19 disruptions (stimuli, pent-up demand, etc.) are gone. Be conservative with your assumptions. If a stock is significantly overvalued compared to those assumptions, don't be greedy and sell out the position.\nA great example is Apple Inc. (AAPL), one of the most popular stocks this year. As a consequence of its very strong financials (revenue grew 36.4% last quarter), its P/E ratio more than doubled over the past two years to 30x. It is important to understand that its recent growth primarily accelerated due to unsustainable drivers such as the several rounds of stimuli cheques. Once this fades away, Apple's growth is likely to fall back to single digits (or might even go negative in the short term) and returns would be very weak going forward.\nDon't keep all that freed up capital in cash, especially in the current inflationary environment. There are still opportunities to re-invest that money. In my opinion, small caps are the most attractive asset class today just like they were in 2000. After its recent underperformance, the Russell 2000 (representing all US small caps) is trading at a P/E of 15.6x today. This is much lower than both the S&P 500 Index and its historical average. There are plenty of small-cap opportunities out there which will generate great returns going forward.\nSource: Yardeni\n3. Adopt a proven investment strategy to pick stocks\nRule #1 and #2 look very good on paper, but are very hard to execute in reality. When push comes to shove, it's very tough to deny your emotions and to find interesting investment opportunities in an overvalued market.\nThat's where #3 comes into play: adopt a proven investment strategy.\nWith the upcoming challenges in the stock market, I believe it has never been as important as today to follow a pre-determined strategy on which you can rely during a highly uncertain market environment. If you use a strategy which worked well in the past, you'll feel great in each market environment.\nThere are many strategies that could work for you, as long as you stick to it. We strongly believe that our under-appreciated strategy at Insider Opportunities will be very valuable in the coming years.\nTo find attractive investment opportunities, we follow insider purchases each day. Insiders are the CFOs, CEOs, board members, etc. who know their business better than anyone else in the market. If they see a disconnection between the share price and the business fundamentals, they can purchase shares to generate profits. You can follow the purchases of this so-called \"smart money\" on a daily basis through SEC filings or websites like openinsider.com.\nWe don't just follow up insider purchases. We created three algorithms based on more than a million of data points over the past decade to pick the greatest ones out of all insider purchases. As such, we stick to a pre-determined plan to only buy stocks that are attractive based on specific fundamentals, called \"golden picks\".\nIt worked tremendously in the past. Our back-test shows that the strategy generated annualized returns of 47.2% over the past decade, tripling the S&P 500 index. Only in 2011 it slightly underperformed the market.\nSource: Insider Opportunities\n\nWe firmly believe that this revolutionary strategy will continue generating wealth for us in the stock market, regardless of how the market performs. Find yourself a strict, proven strategy like ours on which you can rely during the upcoming uncertainties.\nConclusion: Do this at all-time highs\nMost stock market investors are resting on their laurels when all-time highs are being reached. Above all, nothing can go wrong in such a bullish market, right?\nNo, that's not how it works. Markets evolve in cycles and those who don't acknowledge the importance of adapting to these cycles will be struck at weak long-term returns.\nHow should you approach today's all-time highs to keep generating wealth going forward? Here are my three golden rules:\n\nDon't get greedy.As a consequence of emotional behavior, you will want to take higher risks when markets are rallying. Never follow these emotions and always keep focused on the fundamentals.\nKeep being invested.Don't get reluctant to invest in stocks just because markets are getting overvalued. Acknowledge that it's a market of stocks, not a stock market. There are always great opportunities in each market environment. Today, they are mostly available in under-the-radar small caps.\nAdopt a proven strategy.Investing is not easy, especially when things are starting to move southwards. Adopting a strict, proven investment strategy can make life much easier and improve returns significantly.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":131,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":11,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"hasMoreComment":false,"orderType":2}