More than two thousand years ago, the Greek sage and philosopher Epictetus counseled, “It is impossible for anyone to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.”

Nowhere is this truer than in the stock market. You need only ask the many thousands of investors who have sat out an historic rally – the market has doubled from its lows years ago – because they just knew stock prices were only going to go lower.

Like a perfect "President's Day" stimuli, dozen European Union leaders, including British Prime Minister David Cameron and Italian Premier Mario Monti, called Monday for an open-markets strategy to stimulate growth and jolt the region out of its economic doldrums.

H&N photos by Alex Powers----- One of the most important steps you can take to protect yourself is to keep your eye out for opportunities to acquire a portfolio of high-quality common, dividend-paying stocks at safe, cheap prices. Over the long run, this is the best and most surefire way of protecting and building wealth.

Ratio analysis shows us how undervalued the smaller gold stocks are yet an examination of history shows this is not out of the ordinary at this point in a bull market. [2011 was a rough year for the junior mining stocks as measured by the Market Vectors Junior Gold Mine ETF (GDXJ). As the first month of 2012 comes to an end , GDXJ has rebounded almost 30%].