Building Wealth Doc's note: During the 2008 financial crisis, folks across America watched as their nest eggs were cut in half. No one was immune from the collapse in the market – not even Wall Street legend Marc Chaikin.
Today, Marc explains how he helped his wife's portfolio survive the crash and how you can keep your wealth safe from the next crash...
My wife Sandy's investing horror story isn't unique...
Last Monday, I explained how her high-fee active manager drove her portfolio into the ground in 2008. And I know she wasn't alone.
Thousands of everyday Americans watched helplessly as their retirement savings were cut in half – or worse – during the Great Recession.
It was awful. And afterward, many folks made the worst decision they could possibly make...
They sold right at the bottom. Then, they stayed on the sidelines... They wanted to wait to get back in after things had settled down and weren't as volatile. (Of course, that means waiting until after stocks have already recovered... But most folks don't realize it.)
Sandy was more fortunate... She had me at her side. Not everyone has a 30-year Wall Street veteran to lean on, though.
That's why I came out of retirement. I wanted to help out all the folks like Sandy – and anyone else who Wall Street had left behind.
Today, I'll tell you more about the system I created, how it works, and the No. 1 thing you can do to avoid repeating the worst mistakes of 2008...
To save Sandy's portfolio, I first gave her some hard but truthful advice. As I told her...
You have to stay invested. Stocks won't stay down forever. We need to ride this out.
After more than 30 years as a Wall Street insider, I knew that just "stepping aside" and waiting for things to settle down was the worst possible move. That's because of how volatility tends to work after a big crash...
When it comes to the broad market, big volatility up follows big volatility down. A quick glance at the benchmark S&P 500 Index's biggest moves makes this clear...
Major rallies have always come after a big bust.
Most individual investors don't realize this. They don't have a guiding light to keep them on course during market downturns. So they sell at the worst possible times... Then, they miss out on the upside that comes after.
In the end, Sandy fired her portfolio manager and we took things into our own hands... We rolled her retirement into an index fund at Vanguard.
The first priority was making sure she didn't miss the upside in the recovery that was coming... And I knew we needed a plan to keep us steady.
To me, the next step was painfully obvious...
I had spent my career building quantitative tools for Wall Street. And I was darn proud of the work that I had done. With those tools, I had helped many elite investors find success...
But when it came to my wife – and the thousands of everyday investors who had just lost a large chunk of their wealth – well, I hadn't done a whole lot for them.
As Sandy searched for a better solution, I knew that I had the ability and knowledge to fix this problem. So I ended my retirement and got to work...
I went on to build a set of quantitative tools specifically for individual investors. These days, it's called the "Power Gauge"...
The Power Gauge looks at 20 quantitative factors. It's a boatload of data. It covers everything from price performance... to fundamentals... to insider buying trends... to expert consensus.
Collecting and analyzing the data that the Power Gauge uses would take months for most individual investors to do on their own. And that's assuming you even know what to look for and where to find the data.
But fortunately, the Power Gauge pulls all this data together in a matter of seconds...
With the Power Gauge, you just put in the ticker of the stock you're interested in. It pulls all of the data using our 20 factors almost instantly... And it builds a complete report for you.
You can see the readings on each factor that the Power Gauge uses. And even better, you get a simple overall reading – from "very bearish" to "very bullish" – on the stock.
It couldn't be simpler to use. But that doesn't mean it's anything less than professional level.
Most importantly, I designed it to be a guiding light in bad times. And that's what individual investors like Sandy need. To succeed in investing, you've got to have a plan... a process.
The Power Gauge is my process. It levels the playing field. Every day, it helps investors make winning decisions in their portfolios, whether the market is going up or down.
It doesn't have to be what you use. But you need something to guide you in tough times. So form an investment plan, and stick to it. It's the No. 1 way to survive rough times in the markets.
Good investing,
Marc Chaikin
Editor's note: Last week, Marc made the biggest stock warning of his career to date.
It has to do with a strange financial story no one is telling, the most important secret he learned during his nearly 50 years on Wall Street, and a wave of stock crashes that could soon ravage your wealth.
If you have ANY money in the markets right now, you need to see this. Click here for all the details.