Will Rogers said that investing in the stock market is easy.  You buy a stock and when it goes up you sell at a profit. If the stock doesn’t go up, don’t buy it in the first place.

Drum roll, please.

On a more realistic note, I’d like to briefly and simply explain why you should aim to avoid large investment losses.

Suppose you take $10,000 and make five investments of $2,000 each.  At the end of the first year four of your investments have each increased by 15%, which is quite good.  Your to...