There are many paths up the mountain, and all intelligent methods have merit. But the degree of merit can vary tremendously with the times. A value investor, who attempts to find dollar bills selling for 50 cents, is going to have a tough time in a mildly inflationary environment when the stock market is booming. A growth investor, who looks for companies with rapidly and consistently compounding earnings, is going to have a tough time during a deflation. A technician, who follows the price action of charts, has a tough time in trendless markets, or periods punctuated by unpredictable events in the world outside.

What we're most likely to see in the years ahead are titanic moves in many markets, with hard-to-predict timing and direction. Massive forces of inflation and deflation will vie with one another, and it's impossible to say which will dominate or for how long. In that environment safety, and keeping what you have, will be critical. But safety is unlikely to be found in traditional places, simply because the market will be so radically untraditional.

It makes sense to reorient your assets to deal with the market as it soon will be, not the way it recently was or how we hope it will turn out. This may require you to act contrary to your intuition, since you'll need to sell investments that have established good track records during good times and buy investments with bad performance histories. But that's the very nature of buying low and selling high. You'll never buy low if you demand a good track record.