When watching the financial television shows, looking at the headlines on the news internet sites, or reading the latest investing magazines there are the advertisements promoting their outstanding rates of return. With mutual fund advertisement performance, it’s required of them to show the past returns of different time periods.

Most mutual fund companies know many, if not most, of their managers will produce BELOW market returns and only a handful will beat the market through random luck.

So what do the mutual fund companies do with the funds that fail?

They make them disappear by closing them or merging them with more successful funds. The lucky funds that survive are paraded out in the marketing campaigns to lure more investors into the trap.

Academics call this Survivor Bias.

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The truth is: someone will always beat the market – but, it probably won’t be you.

Given a 20-year period, only a small percentage of potential money managers ever beat the market. (They are the so-called “professionals”)

No one knows in advance who the professional will be. But, every year the professionals will try and sadly, the non-professionals will try as well.

Chances are you will be in the 95% who lose to the market if you try and chase the professionals. (It’s one of the 7 Stumbling Blocks most investors face)

So, what’s a person to do with those dismal odds?

It’s easy to get the impression that investing is a fun, easy game to win. After all, everyone talks about how much money they make and how successful they are

You may think you are missing out. You are not! No one ever likes to talk about the losses, and they selectively remember only the wins.

You can beat the odds if you follow these rules I have outline in my Investor Awareness Guide. Download your copy for FREE right here…

If you try to get rich quickly, you will go broke fast.

When it comes to investments for your money, I am sure you have thought about your desired rate of return you would like to achieve and feel comfortable with.

I have heard people tell me they would be “fine” with getting a 6% return. I have heard others say they would like 20% each year.

The truth is: If you expecting more than an eight to ten percent rate of return on equities in a portfolio, chances are you will be disappointed.

On the other hand, a 2-3% rate of return will eventually spell death to your portfolio. That rate will only be eroded by inflation.

If you expect to double your money every three to five years and have picked funds based on managers who have done it the last five years, you have put your money in a very risky position.

You can lose more than you ever imagined!

If the professional money managers knew what was going to happen next, they wouldn’t need your money!

Sometimes I have to step back and watch how television and the media handle stock market fluctuations and volatility. In one sense it is kind of comical to see all the opinions of which way a certain stock is going to move – in the short or long term. Someone says it going up, someone else says it’s a “hold” and others are predicting a downward trend. In another sense they are never dealing with their own money – they are always telling what to do with YOUR money.

Some fund or stock is always making double or even triple digit returns. If brokerage firms, money managers and advisors had any real knowledge of which stocks or equities were going to take off, they wouldn’t need to invest your money. Think about it…they would invest their own and keep all the secrets and profits for themselves.

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To your investing success!