Even if your not a golfer, you can't help hear about Tiger Woods and his amazing accomplishments on the golf course. When you really start looking into his success you realize it is not due just to the way he plays on the course, it is way more to do what he does inside his mind.

There are a lot of players that have the same skills when it comes down to swinging the club, but no one comes close to his ability to win.

Over the past 16 years of my trading career I have seen quite a few traders who have a great ability to read the market and trade but… The majority of them self-destruct because of the way they think about trading.

Do you sometimes question the performance of your investment portfolio? If you are like most investors you have your income producing assets thrown in together with your equity portfolio. You look at the total mix of dividend paying stocks, bonds, mutual funds and equities, and you're confused as to why they're not producing enough income or growing your portfolio value sufficiently.

I have found that part of the reason is the nearly universal propensity of investors to ignore the long-term implications of their income investment decisions while they focus on short-term effects.

How do you make your investment decisions and where do you get your information? If you're like most of the people I know, you look to the experts.

That's fine, however it's important to be aware that for every expert, there's an opinion and for every opinion there's an expert. I have a friend who says that opinions are like noses: everyone has one but you wouldn't live in anyone else's nose!

Around the first of the year, along with the New Year's resolutions, come the New Year predictions for what will be hot and what will not. As if that isn't enough to produce a massive case of information indigestion, now we have the cable financial shows with pretty much the opinion of the hour.