Trading and investing successfully is all about how you manage the inherent stresses in your trading plan. And, yes, every trading plan has its own stress signature.

It depends on such factors as the time frame, the number of pieces of information you must consider, the sizes of your positions, and other things.  Together they describe the outside components of your mind-body experience.

Your own personal style, abilities, beliefs, and skills make up the inner portion of the experience.  Some of these are under your control.  Some probably are not.

If you are going to be successful, the pieces have to fit together. Wishing you had the attributes of a day trader when you don’t or a long term investor when you don’t or a person who does all their own research when you hate wading through piles of data, and on and on, are sure fire prescriptions for not only mediocre results, but most likely some level of misery to boot.

Without getting any more touchy-feely than you’re comfortable with, you can take an inventory of what you bring, what you want, what you need, and match it to an approach for trading/investing that has the best chance for success and for being as low stress as fits you.

Tags: investing, stress, stress management, trading

Dr. Pepper Snapple, DPS,  emerged in its present form as a stock spin-off in May of 2008.  

It has been noted that spin-off stocks often make their best moves in their second year.  This could be taken to suggest that during its first year a spin-off stock is likely to be a good value.

Looking at its chart with 20/20 hindsight, Dr. Pepper Snapple is a spin-off stock that could have been viewed as undervalued to varying degrees during most of its first year.

I believe it is Preston James, a guy who does workshops on trading stocks that have pre-announced higher earnings ahead, who recounts a story in which a man said to him “all I need to know is when to get in and when to get out.”  The story apparently gets a pretty consistent laugh, and yet . . . .  this is it, isn’t it?  When do we get in?  When do we get out?  DPS spent all of its first year lower in price than it is today near the end of its second year.  When “should” you have gotten in?  And when should you get out?

Given that the one thing we know about when this train leaves the station and when it gets to its destination is that it tends to happen when the largest number of riders aren’t prepared, what do we do?  Not really a cute or funny question when it’s your money.

In a general sense, this is a personal, psychological challenge related to how you deal with uncertainty and that is another whole topic.  In its most specific sense, it a challenge of looking for clues, tendencies, correlations, averages; your standard fuzzy types of stuff.

The “second year” observation may have something in it.  Any observations?   thoughts?   ideas?

From Yahoo Finance:  ”Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Inc. operates as a brand owner, manufacturer, and distributor of non-alcoholic beverages in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. It offers flavored carbonated soft drinks (CSDs) and non-carbonated beverages (NCBs), including ready-to-drink teas, juices, juice drinks, and mixers.”

Tags: DPS, fear, greed, investing, psychology, psykchological, spin-off stock, Value Investing