If your a trader you don't have to worry about long term investing. You mentioned that your a swing trader so why do you need to long term invest? If your system has generated you millions of dollars in revenue why change it? If it aint broke don't fix it.
Life is hard, nothing is safe and we all die one day. Now that we got this out of the way, diversification is a risk-averse investor's only free lunch out there in the mkt. Also, I would agree with the other people here who advised caution in listening to ET peeps. Some investing "insights" you might gain here are hazardous to your wealth.
Nothing is 100% safe. Currencies collapse, governments can confiscate rich mens real estate, people can steal your gold & silver, CEOs of corporations can destroy a company while making themselves rich.
I stand by this advice. Most ET'ers don't have the wherewithall or training to understand what's coming down the pipe. The market either inflates or deflates. Depending on the outcome, certain asset classes outperform others. Cover both sides, with a bias towards one, depending on your outlook. Given Bernackes pedigree, track-record and paranoia for all things deflationary, I say the endgame is monetization. Bias the portfolio accordingly. The only credentials that matter in the world of investment and speculation is track-record. That's it. If you seek outside advice, get audited returns for the past 10 years. That includes 2 bear markets. If they only return positive in bull markets and not bears, RUN. Don't walk. That's a big red flag they're clueless. Most money managers can't beat the S&P 500. They index against the market, hire a stable of PHD's and a slick ad firm = marketing magic. Don't be fooled.
Nothing is 100% safe. Worthless fiat currencies collapse, men with guns can steal rich mens real eastate, gold & silver. FTFY
I once read on ET the suggestion of going 25% gold 25% cash 25% bonds 25% stocks As the perfect portfolio composure to be hedged on all future outcomes possible. Worth some thought certainly with possible adjustments to be made depending on personal preference or belief.
In any econominc process, there is one "most" advantageous box. As you look at the cradle to grave line up of boxes , you will notice the one that deals with the shift from buyer to seller. One box is a buyer--seller box. Take leveraged postions in these opportunities. Start with the essentials: steel, oil, cement and aluminum. Here is a mundane example of the buyer seller box. To make 2 tons of cement; it takes one ton of CO-2. Notice that CO -2 is a buyers item. One aspect of it is that the cost is a negative value. It is nice to have raw materials supplied to you where the supplier pays you too. Cement is a useful raw ingredient that has many applications. Traditional cement makers do not have the advantages you have. They have to ship long distances to compete with you. You have all local materials to deal with on both sides of the box. Your job is to deploy capital that you get in your account through continued extraction from huge pools. Keep using capital to make capital through price change which happens under all economic conditions. Continually sweep some capital into buyer-seller boxes and store the ouput during declining prices and sell the output during rising prices. Capital processes into broadly used storable products is a classic "retention of true value" mechanisim. A way to understand this better is to look at the few who are doing this in the world today. Obviously the jumbo pac on this involves all four concurrently. Most people will pass on these types of ideas. Most people pass on optimizing taking the market's offer, too. "Fascinating" is a tough job, but someone has to do it. I thought it would be nice to at least have one "sage" input for you. I don't keep money. I apply it to problems. Getting money is simply opening a pipeline. Problems come to you to be solved. Apply money. Make more money. It is a loop. Notice how I changed your stated problem to reality. By changing a problem to some extent, it becomes a different problem. The unique and terrific problem you can notice in this exposition is that you have one never ending terrific problem. Finding buyer-- seller boxes. The sub problem is injecting new thinking into the box. Often it is technological. Fortunately, all such problems boil down to two things: time and size.