If you think back, you can probably come up with some pretty valuable advice your mother has given you. Don't talk with your mouth full, never ask a woman her weight, take your hat off inside, and stand up for what's right even if you're standing alone. The truth of the matter is; to be a successful investor, a lot of the time you'll have to stand alone. It's an all too common theme in the world of money that the general public, allowing whirl winds of emotion to influence their decisions and feeding off peer pressure, move in a big herd, but rarely get it right. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what's causing the retail investor's latest mistake of piling massive amounts of dollars into the bond market.

Here's how we got to our most recent misstep. The last 2 years has shaken investors so hard that all most of them could do was curl up into a little ball known as money market funds. The immense fear of a global collapse drove people to trade the investments they had for Uncle Sam insured accounts or Folgers cans buried in their backyards. And then at the least expected time it happened, we started the ascent, apparent that we had indeed escaped Armageddon. By this time everyone was realizing that the 0% returns money markets offered was taking them just west of nowhere. The choice was equities or the opposite, in this case, bonds. There was just still too much uncertainty to invest in the stock market. So scorched by that agony of zero return and still fearful of stocks, people went after those bond accounts they'd also abandoned months before, so now they could at least get a sniff of interest.

And man did the money pile in. Hold onto your hats for this. 350 billion, yes with a B, went into bond funds last year, according to Fidelity. Compare that to the just 13 billion in net inflows that went in the opposite direction, equity funds, and you realize the general public had again cast their vote. They did what emotion driven investors always do, fled from equities as the market reached its bottom and began piling into safety on its way up.

So can it really be that big of a deal? With the economy moving along again bonds are pretty safe and pay interest. That's a good thing. True statement, however simply put, the value of bonds fluctuates based on which way interest rates are moving. If rates go down, your bond value goes up and if rates go up, bond values head south. Currently, the Fed has rates at 0%, so you can probably figure out what direction the next move will be, and what that means for bonds.

But never mind the numbers involved. A lot of the time investing is more about common sense than data or charts. As you know, I love to incorporate the thoughts of the greatest investor we've ever seen. Perhaps Warren Buffet's most famous quote is, "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." You could pretty easily translate that into, "Whatever the masses are doing, do the opposite." Based on that, you'll understand why Warren wasn't buying dotcom stocks in 99, flipping condos in 05 or purchasing oil at $140 a barrel in 08. You saw from the inflow numbers earlier where the crowd's dollars are headed now, you can bet his are headed in the opposite direction. Are yours?