7. You must let your profits run and cut your losses quickly if you are to have any chance of being successful. Trading discipline is not a sufficient condition to make money in markets, but it is a necessary condition. If you do not practice highly disciplined trading, you will not make money over long term. This is a stock trading “system” in itself.

8. The Efficient Market Hypothesis is fallacious and is actually a derivative of perfect competition model of capitalism. The Efficient Market Hypothesis at root shares many of same false premises as perfect competition paradigm as described by a well known economist.

The perfect competition model is not based on anything that exists on this earth. Consistently profitable professional traders simply have better information - and they act on it. Most non-professionals trade strictly on emotion, and lose much more money than they earn.

The combination of superior information for some investors and usual panic as losses mount caused by buying high and selling low for others, creates inefficient markets.

9. Traditional technical and fundamental analysis alone may not enable you to consistently make money in markets. Successful market timing is possible but not with tools of analysis that most people employ.

If you eliminate optimization, data mining, subjectivism, and other such statistical tricks and data manipulation, most trading ideas are losers.

10. Never trust advice and/or ideas of trading software vendors, stock trading system sellers, market commentators, financial analysts, brokers, newsletter publishers, trading authors, etc., unless they trade their own money and have traded successfully for years.

Note those that have traded successfully over very long periods of time are very few in number. Keep in mind that Wall Street and other financial firms make money by selling you something - not instilling wisdom in you. You should make your own trading decisions based on a rational analysis of all facts.

11. The worst thing an investor can do is take a large loss on their position or portfolio. Market timing can help avert this much too common experience.

You can avoid making that huge mistake by avoiding buying things when they are high. It should be obvious that you should only buy when stocks are low and only sell when stocks are high.

Since your starting point is critical in determining your total return, if you buy low, your long term investment results are irrefutably better than someone that bought high.

12. The most successful investing methods should take most individuals no more than four or five hours per week and, for majority of us, only one or two hours per week with little to no stress involved.

C.C. Collins is a Financial Planning Advisor and Author of “Scientific Wealth Strategies” at http://www.wealthscientist.com Find more information at http://www.stockinfo4u.com

The repo man doesn't care that your finances are in limbo because you have recently divorced or that your employer informed you in eleventh hour that you were being laid-off. The repo man only cares about fees that they will receive once they recover your vehicle. So, you must protect yourself.

Here's an old fashion remedy for fighting Repo man: If you know you will be able to come up with money needed to pay your outstanding car note in a couple of months or so, switch cars with a friend until you get your finances straight. Better yet, HIDE IT in someone else's garage for a while. Make sure it is someone you did not list as a reference on credit application because Repo man will definitely check their addresses in search of your vehicle.

I know a guy who switched cars with his brother who lived in a different state. Within three months, he straighten out his finances and paid his three month delinquent car note to date, plus late fees. He saved himself high cost of repossession and storage fees, deficiency costs, and embarrassment of having his car repossessed (neighbors do watch).

The trick is to stay a step ahead of repo man. Know their moves before they strike. This will help you prevent repossession, and expense that goes along with it.