Hi, I'm Mark Ukrainskyj. After over twenty years in the financial services industry managing money for a wide variety of people in a wide variety of ways, I am currently on a short break and decided to try this newfangled thing called blogging. I plan on writing about the markets and investing in general. My goal is to help people better understand the markets, their investments, and how to invest in a way that best suits them and their needs.
One of the first things I would like to discuss is that there are many way to successfully invest. You just need to find one that works best for you and understand its benefits and shortcomings. Some people will be good at momentum investing, others day trading and others are value investors. All of these can work, as long as you know what you are doing, why you are doing it, why it works and you stay disciplined.
The discipline part can be the hardest and that is why you have to make sure the investment style fits your personality. Some people find it hard to buy stocks once they have made new highs. They probably shouldn't try to be momentum investors. Those that find it hard to buy when the markets are dropping should probably stay away from value investing. You can have the best strategy in the world, but if you can't actually execute on it because it goes against your personality, then it does you no good.
The other thing to keep in mind is that investing is difficult and takes a lot of time and effort, both to educate oneself and to stay on top of the markets. For many people it makes sense to work with an advisor. This doesn't mean you should abdicate all responsibility, after all it is your money, it just means that you can let someone else do all of the day to day work on your portfolio for you. The type of advisor also depends upon your personality, but I will try and cover that in another post.
