Outperforming the market is always a nice feeling. The Fed will have us believe the recession is over and now they taking preventative measures to guard against a double dip recession. I could care less what they have to say. My investing strategy, while affected by what the gov’t does, is not determined by the gov’t.

I try to make sound investments using financial analysis techniques learned in grad school. Does that work? Maybe. Do I actually do the due diligence on half my investments? No. For my investment research I merely read. 95% of my research comes from reading material off of the internet, 2% from looking at the stock’s performance charts, 2% from a quick look at the industry performance, and the 1% from other sources. All the research I do, still doesn’t always result in a decision, many of the best performing stocks I looked at, I chose not to buy. “Why?” you may ask, because many of the worst performing stocks I also chose not to buy. The research methodology laid out above is only a piece of the decision making process though. I’m interested how do you make stock portfolio decisions?