In each issue of Trade of the Day, I try to introduce you to one unique concept that applies to winning trading in The War Room – without wasting a second of your time.
After all, why study for 20 hours to get an A when you can study for five hours and get the same A? It’s 15 wasted hours to achieve the same result.
That’s why each Trade of the Day issue can be consumed in five minutes or less, yet each one still provides all the valuable intelligence you need to supercharge your daily trading returns.
With that in mind, let’s talk about risk…
We can all admit that the 2018 stock market performance was truly awful. Here’s what happened in 2018:
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- The S&P 500 fell 6.2%.
- The Dow fell 5.6%.
- The Nasdaq fell 3.9%.
This was the worst annual performance for all three major market indexes since 2008. But no example punches you in the gut like the performance of target-date funds.
You see, a target-date fund is a wealth management tool designed to help you invest based on your desired date of retirement.
For example…
- If you want to retire in 2025, there is a fund designed for that.
- If you want to retire in 2030, there is a different fund for that.
And so on…
All told, there are 664 of these target-date funds available right now. Together they hold more than $1.1 trillion in assets. With that in mind, get this (from Barron’s):
It has been a tough year for investors in general, but investors in target-date funds have more reason to be wondering what went wrong. Not one of 664 target-date funds on the market, which together hold more than $1.1 trillion in assets, has had a positive return, according to Morningstar.
Every. Single. One. All losers.
This absolutely boggles my mind. These funds are designed to help people retire, yet not a single target-date retirement fund was positive in 2018. How can this happen?
It’s because they’re avoiding risk.
Yes, you heard that correctly. The way people are taught to approach risk is all wrong.
Avoiding risk blinds you to opportunity. And by doing so, it causes you to lose money.
By contrast, since The War Room launched in May, we’ve had 152 winners out of 209 trades, all while embracing risk. To learn more about the War Room and other trading opportunities, sign up for our free Trade of the Day e-letter.
[adzerk-get-ad zone="245143" size="4"]About Bryan Bottarelli
Whether it was selling the Star Wars figures he collected as a little boy for 50 times their value or using the $125 he made cutting grass to buy a Michael Jordan rookie card that he later sold for $1,500, it was always clear that Bryan Bottarelli was a born trader – possessing the unique ability to identify opportunities and leverage his investments.
Graduating with a business degree from the highly rated Indiana University Kelley School of Business, Bryan got his first job out of college trading stock options on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE). There, he was mentored by one of the country’s top floor traders during the heart of the technology boom from 1999 to 2000 – trading in the crowded and lively Apple computer pit. Executing his trades in real time, Bryan learned to identify and implement some of his most powerful trading secrets… secrets that rarely find their way outside the CBOE to be used by individual traders.
Recognizing the true value of these methods, Bryan tapped into his entrepreneurial spirit and took a risk. He walked off the CBOE floor and launched his own independent trading research service called Bottarelli Research. From February 2006 to December 2018, Bryan gave his precise trading instructions to a small, elite group – most of whom have been followers ever since.
As a “play tactician,” Bryan uses his hands-on knowledge of floor trading to shape opportunities and chart formations into elegant, powerful and profitable recommendations. And by using the same hedging techniques taught by professional floor traders, Bryan is able to deliver his readers remarkable gain opportunities while strictly limiting their total risk.
Along the way, Bryan has developed a cumulative track record that could impress even the most successful hedge fund manager.
He now spends his days moderating one of the most elite trading research forums ever created: The War Room.
