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The most dreaded, deadly superbug just hit U.S. soil...

Last month, a 49-year-old woman in Pennsylvania wound up in a clinic with a rare strain of E. coli. Sensational headlines... sounding like lines from a horror novel... followed the discovery.

Some people like to invest in stocks. Some people like to invest in real estate. Some people like to trade commodities...

But all I want is an investment that goes up every year, regardless of what's going on in the stock market.

The market is going nowhere this year...

It trades up a bit... then back down... only to repeat the process a few months later with fears of a new crisis: new worries about a global slowdown... when the Fed is going to raise interest rates... or what might happen with the presidential election. Take a look at this chart of the S&P 500 stock market index:

It's "a paradise poised for discovery"...

That's what Conde Nast Traveler called Nicaragua. And I agree.

Hidden fees pervade the financial industry...

For example, the fees on fund investments always look small to the untrained eye. A mutual fund can easily charge 2%-3% of assets without looking too expensive.

Crafting the perfect barrel is an art form.

Winemakers around the world debate the virtues of the different types of oak used to make the barrels in which they age their wine. They'll argue that everything from the particular region of forest where the trees grew to the exact subspecies of oak used will subtly change the flavors.

It's one of the biggest cases of corporate malfeasance ever...

The revelation that Volkswagen executives may have lied about some of their cars' most highly touted features has sent the company's shares down 40%...

That sheared $30 billion off of the company's market cap. That's a lot of wealth to evaporate. It happened in a way that no one could have possibly seen coming.

I don't mean that stock movements are hard to predict. I mean that if you were a shareholder of Volkswagen, which trades as VLKAY in the United States and VOW in Germany... you had absolutely zero chance of protecting your wealth from this decline.

If you haven't been following, Volkswagen made a business out of selling "clean diesel" cars. But diesel fuel is notoriously dirty. Volkswagen claimed its technology met emission standards set by the U.S. and the European Union.

That was a lie.

It turns out that the cars' computers had a program that allowed the car to detect when it was being tested for emissions and switched it into a special "clean" mode. When researchers tested the cars on the road, they found emissions were up to 40 times higher than those allowed by law.

The company faces up to $35 billion in fines (though it'll certainly settle for less). It could face lawsuits from customers and shareholders. It'll be paying for one of the most expensive recalls ever. Maybe worst of all, it has irreparably damaged a brand that was the 35th-most valuable in the world.

There's a lesson here. And if you take it to heart, you can protect yourself and your wealth with just a little careful planning.

When good companies go bad, we all suffer from "hindsight bias."

What was nearly impossible to predict at the time looks obvious in retrospect. Moving forward, we figure we'll see the next problem coming.

Look back at a fraud like Enron, the energy company that went bankrupt in 2001. Many people feel that an analysis of its balance sheet would have revealed it was a house of cards.

Even though investors were left with nothing, it feels like it was their fault for not checking into it.

Or look back at a company like BlackBerry (BBRY). It's clear now that the 2007 release of the iPhone would destroy BlackBerry's smartphone business. Shares have gone from $138 to $7.73.

And yet... some of the smartest hedge funds in the business – like D.E. Shaw, Citadel, and Caxton – were holding shares at the top a year after the iPhone was first released.

Don't make the mistake of hindsight bias.

Believing that you can always spot trouble in your investments will just move trouble into your portfolio. Because in real time, you simply won't do so well.

A few smart short sellers did figure out Enron, but many rode it into the ground. Even people inside Enron didn't know what was happening. Only 20 top employees out of 21,000 were high up enough to know the stock was about to collapse.

The Enron 401(k) accounts showed employees had 62% of their retirement savings in Enron stock. A lawsuit claimed $1 billion in losses by employees. Of course, they lost their jobs as well.

These were folks who worked at every level of the company. Some had worked there for decades. They knew their jobs inside and out. Still, they didn't know what would happen to the savings they had piled in shares.

Meanwhile, the top 20 employees sold $130 million worth of shares in Enron's last year.

The investigation into Volkswagen continues. At this point, it is unclear how much the company's management knows or if this was the work of a rogue engineer. Even the now-ousted CEO may not have known what was in store for his company.

If you were a Volkswagen shareholder, no amount of research or insight could have led you to protect yourself. There was nothing you could do.

As investors, we all must admit we are not the smartest people in the world. There will be unanticipated disasters in your portfolio. You cannot avoid it.

The only protection is diversification.

I know that diversification is not the most exciting topic. I know most investors "know" they should be diversified.

New York City has lost its mind.

Or at least, its health officials have.