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Five Greatest Ways of Winning in
the Stock Market

Introduction

I recently read the brochure of an insurance company selling a with profits policy.
They were claiming, as they all do, that on past performance they were the natural
choice. They chose to demonstrate this by looking at the value of policies over a
period of time. The period they had chosen was seven years and two months that
ended some time ago. It was obvious that they chose this particular period because
it illustrated the point they wished to make. It also makes the point that any system
for investing, from throwing darts at the Financial Times to the most complicated
computerised chart research, will probably succeed for some interval of time.

There are periods when Jim Slater’s Zulu principle brings home the bacon,
other times when it does not perform. With this is mind, we have chosen two invest-
ment methods that have some rationale behind them as being as good as any (deal-
ing when the directors do Idea 27 and choosing the worst performing unit trusts from a
management stable Idea 28). You should also remember that neither the publisher
nor I are licensed to give investment advice – so don’t sue if it all goes wrong.

The investment club Idea 25 route also has a lot of logic behind it but is more
likely to produce steady gains over a long period of time than spectacular ones from
inspired trading. If that is not fast enough for you, then the section on hedging Idea
26 shows how a sensible idea can be made to win or lose a lot of money in a very
short period of time. But we must start with the people who regularly and consist-
ently make money out of the stock market – the people in the City itself.