Eyeworld

71 OPHTHALMOLOGY BUSINESS April 2015 Mr. Balser is the CEO of Balser Wealth Management in Avon, Ohio. He works one-on-one with physicians to reduce risk in their investment and retirement portfolios to ensure they will not run out of income in retirement. He can be reached at roger@balserwealth.com. About the author ments are under- or outperforming your benchmark is called "relative strength." Relative strength is simply comparing one thing to another. With your portfolio in hand you compare each and every investment with the S&P 500 and eliminate those that are underperforming the market. This simple tip enables you to come closer to outperforming the index. Tip #3: Know thyself— control your emotions Maintaining sanity is hard to do when the Dow Jones Industrial Aver- age plummets 500 points in a single day and you're staring at a decline of 4–5% of your portfolio. When you have not cashed a ticket all day, it can wreak havoc on self-control. However, successful investors and racetrack hounds are certainly going to have winning streaks as well as losing streaks, which are normal over the course of a lifetime. A trait of a true professional is that it's not easy to tell whether they're winners or losers. If you can't handle the emotional ups and downs of the stock market game, find an expert you can trust and turn your portfolio over to him/her. If you can't handle the emotional ups and downs of betting on horses, then wager only enough to have fun and enjoy your day at the races. Tip #4: Do your research Selecting a horse that produces a winning ticket is no easy task. There are many factors that must be considered in deciding on which horse to bet on. These factors could include the length of the race, the style of the horse, the jockey, the track conditions, the bloodline, post position, the horse's track record, and the trainer. It's foolish to choose a horse based on its name, post position, or the jockey's colors, even though many people do. You have to do your research. This means that as a bettor, you must read Len Ragozin's "The Sheets." "The Sheets" are refined speed figures that theo- retically allow someone to identify patterns based on those numbers. It's like technical analysis, except for horses. The same meticulous method is necessary for investing in the stock market. You wouldn't invest in a company solely based on its logo or name. Think about it: If your last name was McDonald, would you invest blindly in McDonald's Corp.? If your favorite color was red, would you invest in Coca-Cola because the logo is red? I would hope not. To make a prudent investment, you must conduct ample research. Tip #5: Stick with your strategy There are many successful strate- gies for investing and cashing in a winning ticket at the track. The true professional has a strategy that he believes will produce a return on his investment. Watch the vast majority of "newbies" at the racetrack and you'll see that their approach is free of any strategy, and there's no reward once the races are over. In- stead they make generous donations to the betting pools, which is good news for people employing a good horse racing strategy because it's money that they will surely win. So whether you're trying to choose what financial vehicles to dump your retirement savings into or screaming for that also-ran to make it down the backstretch, make sure that your decisions are informed and well researched. Otherwise you may see yourself on the fast track to being put out to pasture. EW

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