Focus On The Market, Not Pundits To Find The Right Time To Buy.(MAKING MONEY)(INVESTOR'S CORNER)

Byline: NANCY GONDO

If we all could predict what will happen on Wall Street, we'd be retired and sitting by the beach with a drink in hand. But that's not the case.

Sure, analysts can estimate a company's future earnings or profit margins on its past numbers. Other pundits may take a stab at where the market or economy is headed. But most are wrong; no one is right all the time.

So who can tell you if stocks will go up or down? No one. Your best bet: Study the market's action each day. When the market gets mired in a downtrend or moves mostly sideways in choppy fashion, you might try sitting on cash.

After all, three of four stocks eventually follow the market's trend. There's no point in fighting the tide. Even if an analyst maintains buy ratings during a bear, a bad stock can keep on falling. Even in a bull market, buy ratings don't guarantee upward price movement.

Instead, tracking stocks' daily price and volume action can help you decide when to buy or sell. Is a stock with strong fundamentals building a sound base? Do you spot more up weeks or down weeks on heavy volume? Is it finding support at its 50-day or 200-day averages, or undercutting those trend lines?

After the tech bubble burst in 2000, many analysts kept buy ratings on dot-coms and other techs even as the Nasdaq ...