There are many out there saying "Buy and Hold Investing is Dead," especially after the recent near-crash of the markets. We tend to agree...sort of.

We discussed the cons of mutual funds previously, but something that's often overlooked is that the majority of individual investment accounts that have mutual funds are strictly buy and hold. There's little diversification, little risk control and certainly a lot of unhappy results. You put the money in and hope for the best.

Buy and be smart

But there are alternatives to buy and hold that are still long-term focused and allow you to control how much time you want to spend managing investments.

We'll discuss them in detail when we talk about Trend-Based Trading and Smart Growth Investing. Trading is naturally a bit more involved than investing, but both can be focused on delivering strong returns year after year, without requiring daily, weekly or even monthly tweaking and management. 

Beware the "seminars," "systems" and "secrets"

There are lots of sites, seminars and salesmen out there touting investing methodologies, systems and even secrets that you should beware of. Most of them are trying to sell you something (usually very expensive) and they are almost all focused on short-term trading.

It is well known in the industry that the vast majority of short-term traders fail. The market is simple too erratic and volatile in the short-term, making it nearly impossible for an Average Joe to profit in it without devoting his entire life to it. Avoid day-trading, swing-trading and system trading, unless it's something you think is fun (which it really can be), and you're willing to lose whatever you put into doing so. We call that kind of money "Risk Capitol."

In the end, the most important thing you can do is continue to learn basic principles, and build a smart long-term plan and stick to it.