Hulbert Financial Digest, which has been tracking the recommendations of investment newsletters for 21 years, has issued its latest rankings of the best and worst performances of 2002.

We talk to potential new clients all the time, people who agree with our ideas about diversification, people who like the way we manage money. But many of them don’t want to commit. They want to stay in cash, or wherever else they are currently invested, until they are sure the market is going up again.

EDITOR'S NOTE:

At the start of 2000, millions of investors acted as if they believed that the old rules of investing had been repealed, that making money had become easy. Without knowing it, they were rushing toward a major bear market. In this article from early that year, Paul Merriman gave investors some unwanted advice that is just as valuable in 2010 as it was a decade earlier.
 
 
The day after Christmas, the Washington Post proclaimed "a sea change in the investing culture of America" as day trading (a clever euphemism for gambling) is regarded as a profession and money-losing companies are revered while profitable enterprises are scorned.