Good time for investing?

Recently there has been much debate as to whether the whole stock market has gone ahead of itself. Whether we have come to a point where the valuations have gone up too high to justify buying stocks again. I haven't lived long enough to see past much economic crisis but there are a few things I've observed.

1) Many critics always comment that investors should wait on the sidelines for a clearer picture of when the economy is truly recovering and growing before investing in equities. The thing is that if you wait till the good news is out before buying a stock, most probably the huge run up has occurred and you missed the boat.

2) Whether in good times or bad, there will always be people with bearish views of the market. However, for the common folk like the majority of us, we are not day traders. ie. a person who trades equities many times a day. We are most probably going to buy something and hold it for a period of time. If so, why let what day traders scare us with their reports? If you hold a decent investment, you will have capital appreciation.

3) If you do not know how to invest, please get someone to do it for you. When I say someone, I do not mean any guy who may just sell you some complex product bundled altogether. (ie, minibonds and high notes). I mean a financial adviser whom you can trust. Invest in a unit trust (NOT AN INVESTMENT LINKED PRODUCT a.k.a. ILP). There are fund managers to help you take care of your money and you will be well diversified as a unit trust buys into a large array of equities depending on the theme of the unit trust. The downside will be the charges and the growth potential may not be as high as if you invested the money on your own as you would not be that diversified.

That all said, we are (I believe) at the bottom of a U shaped recovery. Stocks are still cheap. They were oversold during the period around end 2008 and early 2009. Not overbought post March 2009. We're about right at these levels now.

Time for a pause for an interesting article.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/32392887/

Makes me wonder why Temasek sold its stake in Bank of America. I'm up more than 40% since I bought the stock.

Warren Buffet did comment that he would rather own stocks with the Dow at 9000 than bonds. Who is to argue with the world's best investor?