My Comments: For years I’ve sort of paid attention to omens; how else are you going to justify the bizarre outcomes that invevitably happen and influence how much money my clients end up with over the years. The tempatation, no matter how professional you try to be, is to respond to the advice of those whose skills you respect and whose track record is at least respectable.

A few years ago I decided that enough was enough and I found an approach that ignores omens. The single key ingredient of the approach is the ability of each program manager to evaluate what is happening on any given day, week and month and determine if the odds are better for being invested or staying in cash. Then add the ability to go short and/or leveraged, and the results have been nothing short of phenomenal.

If you’re tired of omens, give me a call.

This article comes from AdvisorOne.com and was written by Dan Berman.

Stock traders might like to believe markets rise and fall based on logic and cold facts, but deep down they know the truth is far more complicated. Emotions, a snippet of news about the economy and myriad other factors can send prices plummeting or rocketing skyward.

While some emotions are driven by the news and other information that has some factual basis, there are some “indicators” followed that are best called omens, or maybe superstitions. These are based on some observed phenomena seen as causing the markets to move.

A well-known example is trotted out every year as the Super Bowl nears. It holds that if the team from the National Football Conference wins the market will rise and vice-versa. There’s no reason this should be true, of course, but the statistics are trotted out each year.

And lest you think the upcoming presidential election has some predictive value, the data shows that whether the Republicans or Democrats win likely has no affect on the price of stocks.

There may not be anything substantive to stock market omens, but they are fun to think about. Here are AdvisorOne’s 8 Stock Market Omens That Influence Investors: