Investing experience may allow investors to make smart decisions and forecast, to some degree, the market. However, no amount of investing experience and foretell where the market will be at any given moment in time. There are too many variables and factors that come into play not to mention politics for any investor to be able to successfully manage a portfolio over the long run without some losses from time to time. However, losses don't necessarily have to be a bad thing as long as you have the right portfolio. The right portfolio to guard against losses is a long short mutual fund.
A relatively new type of investment is the long short mutual fund and despite being new it has some really good selling points. There is no sure bet when it comes to investing, however, when a long short mutual fund manager takes advantage of various investment approaches and includes them within one portfolio then risk is reduced and exposure is lowered.
In a long short mutual fund there are two types of stocks, long and short. The goal is to include stocks that are anticipated to really outperform other stocks and investments while including other stocks that are expected to sell short. This may sound ludicrous at first because what investor wants to include stocks that are actually anticipated to sell short at the outset? The answer is that any smart, savvy investor that wants to get around the volatility of the market would want to implement the strategy used by a long short mutual fund.
When the market is on an upswing there is really no concern about return on investment because money is being made quite readily. However, when the market begins to fall investors with a long short mutual fund portfolio won't be nearly as concerned as other investors for one simple reason. That reason is that the short stocks will kick in and should provide enough of a return to make up for, to some degree, of the losses that occurred from the long stocks in the down market.
If you want some security from the volatility of the market and are concerned about maintaining your investment for years to come all the while hedging risk you may want to consider adding a long short mutual fund to your portfolio.
However, if the market is in a downtrend then the short stocks should provide a decent return and potentially cover any losses that might result from stocks that were purchased.