Trading volumes at online brokers have skyrocketed since the Coronavirus crisis began. If there is one lesson these newly minted traders have learned so far, it is that the market does nothing but go up. But more seasoned investors know that the market, and these traders, will eventually fall upon tough times. In this episode, we discuss some investing lessons that these new traders could learn from legendary investor Peter Lynch. We discuss the importance of understanding the businesses behind stocks you invest in, how to distinguish luck from skill, why investors should avoid "Cutting Their Flowers and Watering Their Weeds", and why making mistakes early in your investing career can be a good thing

Technology has allowed all of us to personalize many aspects of our lives. Rather than accept products tailored to a wide range of people, we are now able to customize products we use based on our specific needs and preferences. But in the world of investing, most investors continue to invest in prepackaged indexes like the S&P 500 that are the same for everyone. That may be about to change, though. The combination of new technology, the elimination of brokerage commissions, and the ability of investors to purchase partial shares of individual securities have come together to create a product that allows investors to build indexes that meet their individual preferences. That product is direct indexing. In this episode we talk about the pros and cons of direct indexing and the details of how it works.

Returns presented on Validea.com are model returns and do not represent actual trading. As a result, they do not incorporate any commissions or other trading costs or fees. Model portfolios with inception dates on or after 12/30/2005 include a combination of back tested and live model returns. The back-tested performance results shown are hypothetical and are not the result of real-time management of actual accounts. The back-testing of performance differs from actual account performance because the investment strategy may be adjusted at any time, for any reason and can continue to be changed until desired or better performance results are achieved. Back-tested returns are presented to provide general information regarding how the underlying strategy behind the portfolio performed in our historical testing. A back-tested strategy has the benefit of hindsight and the results do not reflect the impact that material economic or market factors may have had on advisor's decision-making if actual client assets were being managed using this approach.Optimal portfolios presented on Validea.com represent the rebalancing period that has led to the best historical performance for each of our equity models. Each optimal portfolio was determined after the fact with performance information that was not available at portfolio inception. As a result, an investor could not have invested in the optimal portfolio since its inception. Optimal portfolios are presented to allow investors to quickly determine the portfolio size and rebalancing period that has performed best for each of our models in our historical testing.Both the model portfolio and benchmark returns presented for all equity portfolios on Validea.com are not inclusive of dividends. Returns for our ETF portfolios and trend following system, and the benchmarks they are compared to, are inclusive of dividends. The S&P 500 is presented as a benchmark because it is the most widely followed benchmark of the overall US market and is most often used by investors for return comparison purposes. As with any investment strategy, there is potential for profit as well as the possibility of loss and investors may incur a loss despite a past history of gains. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Results will vary with economic and market conditions.