The four Ps of marketing, also known as the marketing mix, are the seller’s view of the market.  The fours Ps are Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.  The four Ps is a concept that helps marketers to develop their marketing mix that will give them strong positioning in their target market.  An effective mix blends all of the four Ps together to deliver value to the customer.  Another way that marketers can think about the marketing mix is from the customer’s point of view.  The concept which thinks from the customer’s point of view is the  four Cs.

To be honest, no one knows when a bottom is in. Only time can tell.  I am sure you are wondering, “When should I invest then?!”  Well, there isn’t an easy answer; however, there are a few ways to help you choose.

Example:

The market is currently in a down trend. Suddenly one day it rebounds. The next day it rebounds again. What do you do? You can put 1/10 of your money to work in a few stocks. Now, if the market goes down you only have a 1% risk. (10% money at work with 10% stop loss.) If it goes up, you have great upside. You will also want to keep adding to your positions and adding new positions in your stock portfolio.

Another thing you could do is invest after a confirmed market rally. This will help cut losses and help capture gains. You can get the status of the market at investors.com.

Note: If anyone tells you they know when the market is at the bottom - they are flat-out liars. They might pull out their charts and tell you why it is a bottom or about history. Now, history helps us predict things such as in the market, but there never is a for sure in the market.

Many people do not understand risk management. Here is a simple guide you can refer to.

1.  Stop losses - You set them within your broker’s site to make sure a certain stock does not go below a certain price, usually by 8 - 10%.

2.  % of Money at work - If you only have half your money at work, you only have half the risk.

Example of how this works:

For argument’s sake, let’s say you have $100,000. If you were to invest 50% of that money, which would be $50,000, you would have cut your overall risk down to 50%.  That means if tomorrow every stock you had went bankrupt, you would still be left with $50,000 in the bank you did not invest with.  If you are an investor, you should be putting stops on each stock. Usually you will buy on pull backs and put your stop loss at 8% on each stock.

If you only have $50,000 of $100,000 invested, your risk is only 50% and if you put your stop losses at 10% your overall risk is only 5%. To some people this can give great comfort at night knowing they have a tremendous upside, but also have a low risk downside.

Playing around with these types of scenarios can give you different risks and rewards. If interested, I encourage you to see what investing 75% of your money with a 10% loss, etc. will do to your risk/reward. Risk management should always be apart of your stock game plan.