EVERYBODY is at it again.

You know, everybody thought that oil prices were headed to the moon. Oilman T. Boone Pickens was talking about $100 a barrel.

Now that oil prices have seemingly hit a top, everybody thinks that you should have sold your oil stocks.

Natural gas is down significantly, losing about 80 percent of its value from its high. Everybody says don't own the natural gas stocks.

Gold was projected — by a few everybodys — as going to $1,000 an ounce. Now everybody thinks it is headed back to $300.

Don't own commodities, everything is going down! Everybody knows that!

Are you getting the picture here? It is a very rare occasion when everybody is right.

Let me stress one thing, I don't know anymore than anyone else, but it seems to me that this is all balderdash. My view is to stay the course, remain diversified within all economic sectors and relax.

In my 30-plus years of advising investors, I have never been able to time being in and out of a particular sector. Once in a while I might hit it right — it's called luck — but most of the time being prudent wins out over trying to time when to be in and out of a particular sector.

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I think this continues to be a boring market. With the Dow Jones floating around a record high, you might ask why I feel that way. As you know, I am not a particular fan of the Dow because it only contains 30 stocks. Interestingly the vast majority of the stocks in the Dow are not at new highs and that's the wrinkle.

The numbers? About 10 of the stocks are at their highs and 20 are not. Good performance by just a few stocks is making the Dow post record highs.

The NASDAQ Composite is still about 50 percent below its high in 2000. That's 50 percent! The Standard and Poor's 500 is still over 10 percent off its all-time high, so we still have some work to do. The NASDAQ may take some time.

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This is the end of a quarter so let us take a look at how we have done now that three quarters of the year is over.

The numbers look pretty good. As I write this after the end of September, the Dow is about up about 9 percent for the year. The Standard and Poor's 500 is up about 7 percent and the NASDAQ Composite is up 2.4 percent.

The first two numbers look really good. However, the Investor's Business Daily Mutual Fund Index is up only a little over 2 percent year-to-date. That means that, of the mutual fund money managers represented in the index, many of them are struggling.

I'm in their camp. In my view it has been difficult to make a buck this year. Why is that?

The reasons are many. Oil stocks have been really weak. So have gold and some other commodities.

If you did not sell at the highs (and who does?) then you are still holding them and the pullback has hurt.

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I don't really concern myself with short-term performance. Most people would rather have good long-term performance than good short-term.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with good shortterm. However, if you are an investor you need to be long-term oriented.

What is long-term? I think 10 years is a good number to qualify as long-term.

I pay a lot of attention to five years because I think the last five years has been tough, but let us just say that 10 years is longer-term.

Think of this: What if you became an investor sometime in the year 2000? That is six years ago. Theoretically, if you look at the S&P, you could still be down 10 percent or more depending on whether you owned any of the NASDAQ.

That is incredible isn't it?

If you were in the investment business of selling performance, how would you like selling that?

Now, let us look at better timing. What if you came into the market in October 2003? We can loosely say that was the bottom. The S&P is up about 27 percent since then. That is not a bad number for three years is it?

A lot of perspective begins with timing. If your timing was good, you probably look good. If it was not, then the opposite may be true.

I'm hopeful that long-term, 10 years or more, you have done OK.

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I have two closing thoughts for you, none of which my wife thinks is funny. The first is that if you think there is good in everybody, then you haven't met everybody. The second is that if you can smile when things go wrong, then you have someone in mind to blame.

Feel free to check out my Web site for free investment information or to contact me at www.hjpentony.com