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Originally Posted by fazman
This is an election year guys, oil is always down to make citizens happy. Not sure if you know this but there is a group of peeps like a cartel that "control/manipulate" these prices kinda like the Fed with int rates.
Not sure if you know this but the USA prez meets with the top CEO's every year all in one go, i wonder what they talk about... probably their favorite TV shows or fav Netflix original episodes 
As much as you and I as retail investors feel like we have a say in politics or in corporate proxy votes... we don't. Computers run by MM's with high speed connections that front run all of our retail stock trades actually move the markets in the direction that the models are entered to cause max profit for them and max pain for the novice investor.
When everyone is selling their mom's to buy 1 share of Hot Company stock, thats your signal to get out. When everything in the news is about doom/gloom and people say,"the last thing you should ever do is buy stock"... thats when you go all in and buy into solid companies that moved down only because the market shifted (but are solid companies on paper).
never stop investing in retirement accts, you can always still max out and park the money in cash or eqivilant. That way you have dry powder when the market is on the rebound.
Don't try to catch the market on the way down... thats called "trying to catch a falling knife" your going to get cut and hurt. No one will time the bottom, but its best to wait till the upswing and miss a little of the bottom. rallys are long so its okay to miss some inital gains but try to avoid losses at all cost.
Don't use margin or borrow money to invest, its always a bad deal. If you say a stock can't drop 20%, 50%, 66%, etc... guess what... they do its really hard to recover if you held it all the way down. I've personally ridden NFLX from the early $20's --> $294 and then back down to $50's --> $400 ish before i got out
DON'T ever buy into an IPO company for at least the first 366 days of trading... they usually trend down as insider restrictions are removed. They will get lots of drama and lots of insiders dump them to cash out (IPO's are actually an exit strategy for founders).
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Just so you're happy, let's go point by point. Oil down in an election year.
Theread are times when it does, and timed when it doesn't. The term conspiracy theory is used frequently through the article which it is.
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-11-06/the-oddities-of-election-year-gasoline-prices
Small group manipulating oil prices. It's called OPEC. They're the only group that does. Other than that it's a free market.
http://www.businessinsider.com/opec-now-believes-in-letting-the-market-take-care-of-oil-prices-2014-12
The president's meet with corporate heads. Why? To push their agendas. In Obama case it's to push climate change agenda and in all cases for raising campaign funding and votes.
http://www.ibtimes.com/obama-meet-fortune-500-ceos-boost-support-climate-change-efforts-2145786
Micro computer trading manipulates the markets. You posted that the high speed trading manipulates the prices then gave a link as proof. Your link talked about miniscule trades for pennies that were amplified by thousands of trades to make money. Your article doesn't need a link. It just needs common sense interpretation.
If it really was an advantage then everybody especially the large firms and investors would be doing it. They're not. They use trading desks and do bug block trading. Why? Because it isn't front running. Front running is manipulation. Illegal. If they did this as a firm policy their doors would be closed permanently. The perceived advantage is based on your program you can catch movements of the markets. So what. You still need to make the call of buying on the downside and selling on the upside or this strategy just becomes an expensive etf. What big investors and institutions do is buy in large lots. This gets them institutional pricing so they spend less on the trade. Like buying in bulk at Sam's Club. You get that advantage when you but a mutual fund as the pool of assets make you an institional investor too. The downside is if you want to get in or out you could actually move the price against you both directions as you are literally moving the price with your large trades. If you buy a stock large amounts by the time your done you've pushed the price up making it more expensive for you than for the little guy doing one trade. Same on the downside. You get out at lower prices. That's why typically large investors, institutions, etc move in or out over time and not in one movement. The computer stuff did do some market crashes. This is because they are told to sell if a specific price is hit automatically. If the market dips, it triggers sells, them those sells dip the market more triggering more sells etc in a cascading effect. This is why regulators have enacted rules on this type of trading and the crashes happened. Not because there was any competitive advantage.
The rest u agree with except instead of trying to catch the market on the upswing, I would say dollar cost average. There is no way to tell of there is an upswing or a downswing. Dollar cost averaging guarantees you will have a lower cost per share price over time as you buy less shares when the market is up and more shares when it is down. It's not timing the market, it's time in the market that wins.