Before you misread something on this site and think Wow, I can do this stuff. Look at how much money they're making!, let me introduce you to non-conventional investing and what it means to be a non-conventional investor. In general, there are four types of investors, and the potential for growth increases as you move down the list:

The general conventionalist looks for long-term, steady growth and can't (or doesn't want to) stomach the wild swings in stock prices and the markets. Some 50% of all investors are general conventionalists.
The enterprising conventionalist can tolerate minor fluctuations in stock prices, but generally feels that volatile means risky. About 35% of all investors are enterprising conventionalists.
The safety-seeker can tolerate market fluctuations...to a point. Daily and minor fluctuations are largely irrelevant; large price drops are somewhat gut-wrenching. More than 14% of investors are safety-seekers.
Non-conventionalists could care less about market or price fluctuations. We make smart business decisions and do not worry about the fear, greed, or other emotions that generally push stock and market prices around. We know that price will eventually follow value and accept that we can't control when or how. <1% of all investors are non-conventionalists.

Each investor can achieve great things over the long-run. When an investor runs into trouble is when greed (i.e., drooling over potential profits) takes over and he or she begins moving down the list. 100% of your investing is psychological and that psychology will naturally put you into one of the above categories. Try to fight your psychological makeup and you will likely find both sickness and losses.

Risk versus Reward: More Risk Means Greater Losses

Wall Street will have you believe that the way to earn greater gains is to assume more risk. While that may be one way to make more money, assuming more risk usually leads to greater losses. There is another path to high returns.

The non-conventionalist does not believe in speculating or gambling. Instead, non-conventionalists look to make smart business decisions — decisions that are generally not popular at the time. Rather than spreading our money out and hoping the good investments outperform the bad ones, we put our money into our best ideas and leave the "bad" investments alone.

Conservative Does Not Mean Conventional, and Vice Versa

The very fact that we are non-conventional does not mean we are aggressive. In fact, we are typically more conservative than typical mutual funds. Conventional wisdom tells us that owning just a few investments is risky. What if those investments are all wonderful?

We do not believe that the best way to reduce risk is to take money out of our best ideas and spread it around to second-best investments, simply to minimize the price swings we may experience.

What Are Our "Best" Ideas?

Our best ideas (in stocks, at least) generally come from two sources:

General stocks: We recognize that stocks represent ownership in a business. As such, we seek to figure out the value of the business first. Then, we figure out how much each share of stock is worth. Only when we have the opportunity to steal the business because it is on sale do we invest.
Workout situations: When a merger, acquisition, or other corporate event is all but complete, we seek to make money on the deal. These workout situations offer us a specific profit over a definite timeframe, and beat the heck out of leaving money in cash.

Our Goal for Growth

The non-conventional investor is looking to beat the markets by a significant margin in the long-term. Though each investor is different, the common goal is generally to beat the markets by 5% a year over various four- and five-year periods.

To achieve our goal, we ignore the noise on Wall Street and instead turn to company reports and financial statements. If we don't have a price in our heads before we look at the stock quote, we pass.

How Does One Become a Non-Conventional Investor?

Some people have it built into their system; some people work hard to become non-conventional investors. The best way to become a non-conventional investor is to:

learn everything you can about business;
study various investment and trading strategies;
truly come to know that price follows value; and,
truly come to know that risk is in the business or opportunities, not in the strategy.

You don't have to be non-conventional to achieve your goals. But to achieve your goals, you must stick with the investing strategy built into your psychology or put forth the effort to change your psychology. And it starts with a change in perspective.

To start, I invite you to check out the blog. To learn more about the various styles of investing, you may want to read this post about asset allocation strategies.