Much has been said and written on the secrets of successful investing. Yet these prescriptions are anything but secret—there’s nothing new under the sun—and these so-called secret strat-egies can’t be counted on to produce results.

There is no one thing, no silver bullet, that can guarantee suc-cessful investment returns. People who look for a silver bullet are look-ing for an easy way to achieve investing success. But there simply is no easy way.

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You’ve doubtless heard the saying, “Beware of strangers bearing gifts.” You should also beware of “gurus” bearing predictions.

These gurus are ubiquitous. It’s kind of like predicting the winner of a football game: No one focuses on the wrong predictions after the actual outcome, so these gurus aren’t held accountable. They are able to stay in business when, in fact, they are often no better than snake oil salesmen, promoting their own agendas, usually in the form of products or services. Self-proclaimed financial gurus are a plague to investors, because many people will act upon their predictions, to the detriment of their portfolios. The fact is that more often than not, these gurus’ forecasts are wrong. 

I know I'm not saving enough for retirement, and a lot of my friends are in the same shape. How common is this, and what can people do about it?

Quite common. This problem is highlighted by the American Savings Education Council. The last week of February was America Saves Week, but few people are aware of this designation or are concerned about it, though they should be. Research shows that Americans collectively are several trillion dollars short of where they should be regarding retirement savings.

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