My wife invested a tidy sum more than a decade ago in five Chinese companies – and then forgot about it. When going through some paperwork, she rediscovered her investments and learned they had grown five-fold in value by November, 2007.

Our awareness of the investment, however, weighed on us during the calamitous events of 2008 as we watched, month-after-month, the value of the stock slide until we couldn’t take it anymore – in January this year, with the value just 20 percent up from her original investment, we cashed out.

From my previous reporting on behavioral finance, I knew that in the long run the smarter move would be to keep the cash in the market. But an surprise pregnancy and the unplanned expenses (to counter the unplanned joy) made it a straightforward decision for us. At least, we were getting out while we were ahead.

And then I’ve watched the Chinese stock market roar back to life, with year-to-date gains on the Shanghai index alone reaching 90 percent in August.

Doh!

What can I say – we’re human. And as humans we have a nagging propensity to sell low and buy high.

According to behavioral economist, our natural “fight or flight” impulses that kept us alive in the jungle often make our investment portfolios dead meat.

A buy and sell of a stock on a single day is a virtual coin toss: investors have a 50.2 percent chance of making money, investment counselor Philippa Huckle once told me. The longer investors hold, however, the chances of profit expand exponentially: there is a 70 percent likelihood of earning a profit holding for 18 months. Hold for five years, odds increase to a 95 percent probability of positive return, she said.

Yet despite this knowledge, our patience for investment is slipping: from 1984 to 2000 the average stock buy was held for two years and seven months; by 2004, the average slid to two years and two months.

According to Dalbar Inc., a financial research company, a $10,000 mutual fund investment in 1985 left to sit without withdrawal would be worth $95,000 in 20 years, despite losses suffered during the 1987 market crash, the 1997-98 Asian currency crisis and the technology implosion of 2000.

One interesting fact from behavioral finance research helps explain why we dropped that forgotten Chinese stock once we became aware of it – loss aversion. Research shows that investors “feel” the loss twice as much as a similar gain: In other words, the experience to lose $1 ,000 twice as intense as the pleasure of a $1000 gain.

Watching the stock drop month-after-month became too much to take, and we – like a lot of other investors – wanted that pain to go away. And it cost us.

Now I’m trying to forget that, too.

How do you find the right financial advice? First find the right financial adviser. CNN's Andrew Steven's reports.

In an special Web exclusive, an extended chat with John Gannon of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority on sussing out the best financial adviser.

We've all heard financial experts talk about "shorting" the market, and the role that "short-selling" arguably played in the global financial collapse. But is it really such an awful financial tool? And are U.S. regulators correct in cracking down on the industry?

And in a Web exclusive, Stephen Figlewski of New York University take a long look at the world of short-selling.

Sometimes I think if you want to be a serious investor, you shouldn't become a business journalist. Sure, you learn a lot about various industries and get insightful advice from experts at the top of their game. On the other hand, you know all too well how everything can go terribly awry.

Jim Rogers, the famed commodities investor and author of new book "A Gift to My Children: A Father's Lessons for Life and Investing," admitted to me that he is a horrible short-term investor.  However, he says you don't need to be a good trader to make money.

Here are his tips for anyone looking to invest in the current economic crisis:

1) Buy what you know. "You should only buy things that you yourself know a lot about - whether it's cars, sports, hairdressing, fashion, or whatever it is," he told me.  "Do some research, do some homework, and if you see something really dramatic changing that is cheap, buy it.  You are going to know about it long before I am, long before a broker on Wall Street is, and that is how you are going to make a lot of money. "

2) Don't be cocky. "Being overactive is usually a mistake," Rogers mused.  "It always leads to problems.  People don't like it.  They want to jump around all the time.  That's not the way to succeed as an investor."

3) Buy low, sell high. "It's as simple as that," he said.  "Nobody likes to hear it.  Now that is so simple and so easy, but you cannot believe how difficult it is to buy low and sell high.  That is the hard part."

So what is Rogers doing with his money?

He wouldn't buy stocks today - not even in emerging markets.  He is selling the U.S. dollar because "it's a flawed currency."  Today, he would put new investments into commodities or what he thinks are "sound" currencies such as the Canadian dollar and the Japanese yen.  And one of his favorites - farmland.  With food prices rising, he believes farmland "may be one of the best investments a person can make in 2010."  But get to know the farmer and the industry first, he reminded me.

In other words, be sure to do your homework.

The first thing that took me by surprise about my interview with Madhu Kannan, the CEO of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) was the timing of our chat. “Can you be here by 8.25 am?” he asked. Sure, I replied and cameraman, Sanjiv, and I reached his plush office right on time.

It had taken around 3 months and an endless number of emails and phone calls to the BSE’s press office to confirm a date and time for our interview. It was frustrating to keep chasing them – I put it down to Indian bureaucracy and poor time management, unfortunately still typical of many large Indian companies.

“That’s one thing I am trying to change,” said Kannan when we interviewed him. “I want to start meetings on time and change the culture so no one’s late for meetings.”

It’s just one of the many, many challenges Kannan has ahead of him.

His big task: To revamp the BSE and make it relevant again.

At 37, he’s the youngest CEO of Asia’s oldest stock exchange. It’s an exchange that needs help.

While it had a virtual monopoly over stock trading in India, the entry of a rival exchange – the National Stock Exchange in the early 1990’s – changed that. The BSE now handles only a fraction of all trading done in India. To compete more efficiently, it needs to invest in better technology, says Kannan, who also has plans to make the BSE a one-stop shop for investors looking to trade across multiple platforms.

Sure, Kannan may get the BSE back on its feet. However, the real challenge for any stock exchange in India – be it the BSE or the NSE  – is to get more people to invest in stocks. Only a tiny fraction –two percent of India’s billion strong population – dabbles in the share market. Those in rural areas still prefer to invest in tangible assets like gold.

Even if Kannan is able to win back customers who’ve switched to the NSE, convincing newcomers to try their hand at trading shares, say observers, could be key to the BSE’s success. Given the robust year the Indian stock market has had, it could well attract a bunch of new investors.

Kannan has already started the process of repositioning the BSE. He’s in the process of buying a technology firm, has cut transaction fees, and – oh yes – he starts all his meetings on time.

LONDON, England – Based on fundamentals, the markets shouldn't be at the levels they've reached. Some hard cold realities have been reminding investors that the long awaited recovery may turn out to be more anemic than anticipated.

Have markets over-heated?

Take last week for instance. U.S. stocks fell worst than expected on monthly manufacturing numbers and a horrific employment report.

The number of U.S. workers on payrolls fell by 263,000 in September - much worse than expected - and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, a 26-year high. To make matters worse, the average workweek fell to a record low of 33 hours, hardly encouraging to those who have been buying stocks on recovery hopes.

Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the financial crisis, is bearish on the market. "Markets have gone up too much, too soon,too fast," he said in an interview over the weekend with Bloomberg.

"I see the risk of a correction, especially when the markets now realize that the recovery is not rapid and V-shaped, but more like U-shaped, that might be in the fourth quarter or the first quarter of next year," he said.

Roubini is not alone in his thinking. The head of global bank HSBC, Michal Geoghegan, is worried the economic recession could be worst than some anticipate.

"Is this a V recovery or a W?" Mr Geoghegan asked in an interview with the Financial Times. "[I think] it’s the latter. [If I’m right] we have to be very careful we don’t grow the balance sheet so far before the recovery has come only to write it back into the impairment line later on. I’m cautious about growing too fast."

And economist Lena Komileva of Tullet Prebon said the weak data, specifically referring to the manufacturing data out of the U.S. last week, "do challenge the market's optimism that this year's capital markets rally is the bellweather of a V-shaped economic recovery and it forces a negative revision of future quarters growth projections, which challenges current valuations."

In simple talk, the markets are ahead of themselves. The global equity rally has added about $20 trillion to the value of stocks worldwide since this year's low on March 9, according to Bloomberg.

Governments have spent about $2 trillion on stimulus, while central banks have taken extraordinary measures to try and get growth moving again.

All that liquidity and hopes of a global recovery have pushed stocks substantially higher, more than 50 percent for the S&P 500, and nearly 50 percent for Europe's Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index from their March lows.

While markets are off their best levels, they are still too high based on economic reality. I suspect the disappointing economic numbers last week, won't be the last. If Roubini and some others are right, markets have much further to fall.

Do you think the markets are too high?

Is it the bloodbath in your retirement savings, or the lost equity in your home that’s got you thinking?   Or is it the seemingly constant news about investment professionals behaving badly (say, hosting lavish parties at foreclosed properties), or outright robbing their clients of billions of dollars (think, Bernard Madoff), that has you wondering how to protect what’s left of your nest egg?

For thousands of Americans, investment clubs are the answer.  I’d been wondering how the clubs have been doing in this downturn, and how average investors have been faring against the big professionals, you know, the ones with beach properties now up for sale to pay for their crimes.  So I visited an Atlanta-area club called “Mutual Investors of Atlanta,” to see what they’ve been up to.

This is a long way from the lavish boardrooms and offices of Wall Street.  This group meets in the back room of a local grocery store once a month.  Larry Reno, 62, started the club more than a quarter century ago.  At the height of the financial crisis, the club’s portfolio was down by 50 percent.  It slowly climbed with the market, and Reno now claims the group is ahead of big, professionally managed mutual funds.   The club’s $100,000 portfolio is now down just a little more than 2 percent.   Each club member expressed optimism about the future, and claimed they weren’t really terrified when things got bad.  They had each other.   I’m skeptical, but I’m also thinking, well, it’s better than the rest of us who were just afraid to look at our statements for six months!

The group is aggressively buying technology stocks and health services companies.  This year’s run-up on the NASDAQ has been kind to their portfolio. At the meeting I attended, they opted to purchase more PetMeds stock.  Most members are amateurs, but there are a couple of experienced investors on the team.  They help the other members understand PE ratios, work software to track stocks, and keep emphasizing the need to buy solid companies, dump the losers without looking back, and look for solid business fundamentals, not the latest media darling.

The meeting was professionally run, with the minutes recorded and read, and with each investor reporting on an assigned stock-- indicating whether they believed, based on the research, that the stock was a buy, sell or hold.   When one member drew a blank on “upside/downside ratios,” another club member was only too happy to explain what it meant (a ratio greater than 1 means more stocks are increasing in price than dropping). Does your broker do THAT?  Or does she send you running for Investopedia.com to figure it out for yourself?

“Mutual Investors of Atlanta” is part of the Better Investing group, a national organization that sponsors educational programs, conferences, and promotes the idea that managing money as a group of equals, equals great results.  Check them out at www.betterinvesting.org.  If you like the idea of individual accountability, strength in numbers, and if you have a strong stomach to stay the course, this might be an investment approach for you.