But Odysseus could not achieve both aims, and perhaps neither will you. Odysseus lost six of his men as he sailed past. But he did avoid being sucked into the whirlpool to certain death. He saved his own life and the lives of the rest of his crew, too. Like him, you might lose a few clients at the height of a bull market or at the bottom of a bear market, but most will stay with you and be grateful once you are through the channel. After all, it's better to lose a few clients and retain most than to steer close to the whirlpool and lose them all. Stay the course.

Warning No. 3: Tell your clients they defy the market forces at their peril.

After surviving the Sirens' song and the whirlpool of Charybdis, Odysseus' crew was destroyed by Zeus for sacrificing the cattle of Helios. They killed the animals even though Odysseus had warned them repeatedly that the gods had told them not to do so.

Although Odysseus himself was spared, his crew paid the final penalty for believing they could defy the equivalent of the market forces. They found out, too late, that chasing performance and the "hot stocks" seldom works.

"If you leave [the cattle] unharmed, and think of nothing but getting home, you may yet after much hardship reach Ithaca," Circe told Ulysses. "But if you harm them, then I forewarn you of the destruction both of your ship and of your comrades; and even though you may yourself escape, you will return late, in bad plight, after losing all your men."

Your clients might also be tempted to chase the investment herds. They become confident that the market has bottomed or topped. They know where interest rates are going. They know which stocks will be the market leaders.

Some financial advisors might identify with Homer's words that Odysseus "suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion."

Do all you can to prevent your clients from killing their investments through their own foolishness. Tell them they should not wait to find out-too late-that no one knows which way the market is going. The forces that decide where it will go are bigger than each investor. They are bigger even than groups of investors. They are determined by forces that no one can control or predict.

Remind your clients, therefore, that they should not invest on the basis of where they think the market will go. They should leave that to the market forces and invest in a way that enables them to survive, and occasionally triumph, whatever the market does.

Explain to them that the purpose of the capital markets is to allocate capital to those enterprises that will most effectively contribute to economic well-being, not to make investors rich. Risks and returns in the capital markets, therefore, need to be consistent with current economic conditions. It's sad but true that investors are not the center of the universe.