The top 30 most volatile days for stocks since 1969, bar one, all occurred in 2008. The one exception was in November 1987, shortly after the Black Monday wipe out. These are the startling results compiled by one of our favorite market gurus Dr Van Tharp.
There’s one investing rule more important than all others. It has nothing to do with stock picking or market timing. Although about 95% of all investment commentary in the mainstream media deals with these two aspects of investing, you’d be surprised how little these actually matter.
Back when I was still managing money 10 years ago, I had a client who transferred in a rather sizable account. There was only one problem. Over 90% of his net worth was tied up in a single stock, Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC). He refused to use a trailing stop or sell a share of it or even to use a position sizing strategy.