Here are 10 investment rules that have historically helped keep investors out of trouble over the long term. These aren’t unique, by any means, but rather a list of investment rules that in some shape or form are followed by great investors.

1. You’re a saver, not an investor. Unlike Warren Buffet, who takes control of a company and can affect its financial direction, you're speculating that in using your hard-earned savings to purchase shares of stock or funds today can be sold at a higher price in the future. Interestingly, if you ask most people if they would bet their retirement savings on a hand of poker in Vegas, they’d tell you “No.” However, daily, these same individuals will buy shares of a company about which they have no real knowledge simply because "someone" on television told them to do so.

2. Don’t forget the income. An investment is an asset or item that will generate appreciation and/or income in the future. In today’s highly correlated world, there's little diversification left between stock classes. Markets rise and fall in unison as high-frequency trading and monetary flows push related asset classes in the same direction.

This is why including other asset classes like fixed income, which provides a return of capital function with an income stream, can help reduce overall portfolio volatility. Emotional mistakes can be caused by large portfolio swings, if the investor has no overall strategy.

3. You can’t buy low if you don’t sell high. Most investors do fairly well at buying but underperform at selling. The reason is purely emotional, driven primarily by greed and fear.

Having that strategy to provide you with a solid discipline of regularly taking profits, selling laggards, and rebalancing your allocation usually leads to a healthier portfolio over time.

4. Patience and discipline are what wins. Most individuals will tell us they're long-term investors. However, as studies have consistently shown, investors are driven much more by emotions than not.

The problem is that, while individuals may have the best of intentions of investing long-term, they ultimately allow greed to force them to chase the year’s hot performers. However, this has generally resulted in severe underperformance in the subsequent year as individuals sell at a loss and then repeat the process.

This is why good investors stick to their discipline in good times and bad. Over the long term, sticking to what you know and understand will perform better than continually jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

5. Don’t forget Warren Buffet’s rules. Rule No. 1: Don't lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.

Knowing both “when” and “how much” to invest is critical to winning the game. The problem for most investors is that they are consistently betting “all in, all of the time.”

The fear of missing out in a rising market can lead to excessive risk buildup in portfolios over time.

The reality is that opportunities to invest in the market come as often as taxi cabs in New York City. However, trying to make up lost capital by overexpanding your overall risk is a much more difficult thing to do.

6. Your most irreplaceable commodity is time. We are all savers with a limited amount of time to save money for our retirement.

7. Don’t mistake a cyclical trend as an infinite direction. There's an old Wall Street axiom that says, the trend is your friend ... as long as you're paying attention to it and respecting its direction. Unfortunately, investors repeatedly tend to assume the current trend will last into infinity. All trends will or have ended eventually.

I believe we are in a secular market now. Secular expansion is defined as a broad expansion in the economy, corporate profits, and technological developments. This type of expansion touches upon just about every element of society. Secular bull markets tend to last anywhere from roughly 15 to 20 years or longer, while secular bear markets last about half to three-quarters as long.

A cyclical market of either type tends to be much shorter in duration and depth than a secular one and is often confined to a narrower segment of the economy. It includes recessions, expansions, and specific booms and busts of single sectors.

8. Investment success can breed overconfidence. Every day, individuals pile into one of the most complicated games on the planet with their hard-earned savings with little, or no, education on or about the process.

For most individuals, when their holdings are rising, their success increases their confidence. The longer the market rises; the more individuals attribute their success to their own skill.

The reality is that a rising market can cover up a multitude of investment mistakes that individuals may make by taking on excessive risk, poor asset selection, or weak management skills. These errors generally will show up in a correction.

9. Being a contrarian is tough, lonely, and generally right. Howard Marks, who runs Oaktree Capital Management, once wrote: “Resisting—and thereby achieving success as a contrarian—isn’t easy. Things combine to make it difficult, including natural herd tendencies and the pain imposed by being out of step, since momentum invariably makes pro-cyclical actions look correct for a while. That’s why it’s essential to remember that being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong. Given the uncertain nature of the future, and thus the difficulty of being confident your position is the right one, especially as price moves against you, it’s challenging to be a lonely contrarian.”

The best investments are generally made when going against the herd. Selling to the “greedy” and buying from the “fearful” is extremely difficult without strong investment discipline, management protocol, and intestinal fortitude.

For most investors, the reality is that they're constantly flooded with financial media chatter and other uninformed opinions. This keeps them from making logical and intelligent investment decisions which, unfortunately, can lead to bad outcomes.

10. Comparison is your worst investment enemy. The best thing you can do for your portfolio is quit benchmarking against a market index that has nothing to do with your goals, risk tolerance, or time horizon.

Those very important guidelines should be based on what is best for you, personally, not some generic computer test or article.

Comparison in the financial arena is the main reason many investors have trouble patiently sitting on their hands, letting whatever process they are comfortable with work for them.

For example, if someone had made 12% on their account, they're usually quite pleased. However, if we then were to inform them that everyone else made 14%, they now may become upset.

The creation of more benchmarks and style boxes is nothing more than the creation of more things to compare to, thus allowing you to stay in a perpetual state of confusion and/or envy.

The only benchmark that truly matters to you is the annual return that is specifically required to obtain your retirement goal in the future. If that rate is 4%, then trying to obtain 6% would more than double the risk you have to take to achieve that return.

Taking on more risk than necessary will ultimately likely result in not making your goals when something inevitably goes wrong.

The reality of any investing is that you will always be uncertain as to your outcome.

The reality of this certainty of uncertainty is that none of us can control outcomes. The most you can do is influence the probability of certain outcomes. This is why investing based on probabilities, rather than possibilities, to create your asset allocation is important, not only for capital preservation, but for your investment success over time.

Keeping the right frame of mind about the risk that is undertaken in a portfolio can help stem the tide of loss when things inevitably go wobbly.

Most importantly, while you may “beat the market” with paper profits in the short term, it's only the realization of those gains through actually taking your profits that generates spendable wealth.

Michael Maehl is a retirement income specialist and Spokane-based senior vice president of Opus 111 Group LLC, a financial services company headquartered in Seattle. He can be reached at 509.944.1790.