I once read somewhere that B and C high school students tend to enjoy more “successful” lives than the straight A-ers. And while I can’t confirm or deny that statistic, although I’d sure love to believe it (which gives you a clue as to my GPA), I can say that being average when it comes to investing has clearly not been the secret to long-term success…

In April the U.S. economy created 290,000 jobs (230k coming from the private sector) – should be a game changer. But alas, given the problems in Europe, the news has fallen on deaf-eared traders…

I could here list a plethora of positive economic stats along with earnings results and estimates that would encourage the staid-hearted investor to pony up whatever cash he/she can and buy stocks like there’s no tomorrow…

I could also list here a near-plethora of concerns around pending legislation, higher taxes, social programs, etc., that would encourage the faint-hearted investor to sell his/her stocks like it’s the end of the world…

And no doubt, I’ll give you all you can stomach on both sides of that fence in the weeks to come. But it’s during times like these that I feel it’s my responsibility to discourage emotionally-driven investment decisions. Or in other words, help you keep from making the classic investment mistakes…

So with that in mind, I pulled the following from my book Making Lemonade. Please take just a minute and give it a read, then forget about the market for now, and enjoy your weekend…

Forward

Over the past two decades, I have had the pleasure of helping literally hundreds of investors design and maintain their investment portfolios. In the process, I have discovered what I truly believe to be the secret to long-term investment success. Unfortunately, my discovery won