Why Smart Investors Are Selling Oil Stocks and Buying MLPs

By Editorial Dept - Oct 23, 2026, 6:30 AM CDT It is often said that a very high percentage of individuals who trade in their own investment or brokerage accounts go broke within the first year. There have been several studies affirming that, so I don’t doubt that it is true, but to me the more interesting question than whether it is true is why it might be so.If you are attempting to take on the pros and trade intraday moves, then I get it. You are at a huge disadvantage in terms of order visibility, trade execution time, trade size, and a whole host of other things. But if you are swing trading: buying and selling with multi-day, week, or month-long time frames, then a lot of those disadvantages aren’t there. You may not be quite as good at analyzing a stock’s prospects and predicting the next move as are the pros, but there are very few inbuilt disadvantages that hamper individual swing traders or short-term investors.And yet the evidence suggests that the majority of those people also lose money consistently.Based on my forty-plus years of experience, both in dealing rooms and working with individual traders, I believe the biggest difference between those who trade for institutions and those who trade in their own accounts is the two groups’ awareness of the tendencies of human beings, and their ability to go against them.Basically, most of us are wired to fail as traders. We want to grab the good thing and ignore the bad, to celebrate success and be wary of failure. But trading demands… COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP (FREE) GLOBAL ENERGY ALERT ($697 $279 PER YEAR) Breaking energy stories before they hit the mainstream media Top quality analysis from industry veterans Exclusive investment opportunities Digestible data breakdowns Geopolitical insights from our network of over 600 operatives Risk-free 30-day money back guarantee