Dykstra: Stick to Your Guns

Listening to all the negativity and being able to brush it off isn't easy these days.

I had to do it all the time as a player. People who didn't know anything about me would yell at me while I patrolled center field, cursing at me and screaming things to try to get under my skin. I usually just laughed because most of it was so ridiculous. In order to succeed in the bigs, you can't listen to that stuff.

The same goes for investing in the markets. Everyone has an opinion and a different approach, and it can be difficult to filter out the noise. For me, I take great pride in my system and my newsletter, Nails on the Numbers. Many of my picks ring the register in only a few days for quick $1,000 wins.

Halliburton (HAL Quote) won after just two days in play, while United Technologies (UTX Quote) won the same day I picked it. Parker Hannifin (PH Quote), Chesapeake Energy (CHK Quote), Shaw Group (SGR Quote) and Caterpillar (CAT Quote) took a single day to bring me a victory. Texas Instruments (TXN Quote) and Microsoft (MSFT Quote) each took three days.

Winning in one day is like hitting a home run on the very first pitch of the game. However, some picks take a long time to cross the finish line, and along the way I heard a lot from concerned subscribers. I've received several emails from people calling me nasty names about my Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM Quote) pick from July 9.

I have won with this company before, but for some reason, this time, it was not doing well. People get antsy and nervous when things don't go quite how they planned, but the important lesson with this pick is that I stuck to my guns. I knew the reasons I chose this company were sound and that I needed to be patient.