In the years following the financial crisis, individual investors, angry with Wall Street and disappointed by the performance of their so-called "expert" brokers, transferred a total of $400 billion out of full-service investment management firms and deposited it into self-directed accounts at online brokers. But once they made sure that their money was out of the hands of the "professionals" and the obligation to direct their investments was squarely on their shoulders, many individual investors--especially the novices--realized that they weren't quite sure where to begin.
Fueled by anxiety about where to put their money, they found themselves asking, "What do I do now? When do I buy? When do I sell?" Until recently, these individual self-directed investors had little means of answering the myriad of questions that arose when they decided to take their financial future into their own hands. But now, thanks to Marc Chaikin, creator of the first real-time analytics workstation for portfolio managers and stock traders, individual investors everywhere can start picking stocks like the pros, even if they don't have an MBA or a Wall Street pedigree. All they need is The DIY Investor, which introduces readers to Chaikin Power Tools, a dynamic suite of sophisticated investment decision-making tools previously available only to Wall Street professionals.
