The stock market is playing your song.

Are you listening to the music of the market? Until you can hear it, you will not be in sync with price action. If you are out of step, you will lose money. Few investors learn the words, much less the music.

About 99% of money managers continue to play one song, “Buy And Hold.” Part of the time they are dancing without problems. Investors and their financial partners do well for long periods of time. Music plays its tune for about 16 years. Every dancer believes that he is dancing with the stars.

Suddenly the rhythm changes from a Foxtrot to a Tango and the investor and his partner fall. They can’t hear the beat. Every time they try to get up they fall back down.

They know the pace has changed, but they keep taking the BuyNHold step and they keep falling. Her dance instructor doesn’t seem to be doing it right either. He allows his students to fall.

The stock market has a rhythm. You’ve seen drivers wave their batons, up and down, up and down. And music follows those waves of notes going up and down. Investors do not want to be out of sync with the music of the market.

All successful market technicians learn music from both the high beats and the low beats. The title of the song is “Technical Analysis”. The rhythm is very different from “BuyNHol”.

The dancer-investor can learn the high and low beats. He can be long the market when it is going up and get out when it is going down. That’s dancing with the stars. That is the first prize.

How and where does an investor learn music? Not at your brokerage firm or your mutual fund manager. Few of them have mastered the tune, as is easily seen by their performance during bear markets.

it’s your money. If you want to keep it and watch it grow, you need to become more adept at managing your funds than mutual fund managers. When you look at his record, that won’t be too hard.

Go online. Draw charts of the stocks you own. With a free service like http://www.bigcharts.com, you can enter a 200 day simple moving average. Compare it to your mutual funds and ETFs. When the line goes up, keep your equity. When it starts to go down, sell. Very clear.

Whatever you do, do something you can check, as fund managers never sell. Learn the rhythm of the market music. Learn the dance steps that make money.

When you have learned the dance steps you will hear the music.

Let the band keep playing.