Once you have made the decision to become a DIY investor, and manage part or all of your investments, then one of the first choices you must make is whether to be a ‘passive’ or ‘active’ manager of your portfolio.

As a passive investor your life will be quieter. You can choose the sector that you believe has long-term growth potential, then select the fund manager and finally step away for the long-term.

If you get it right then this will work. However, it’s a really big ‘if’ as the investment climate can change rapidly and what was good can frequently turn sour.

That is why many billions of investors’ money is sleeping peacefully and undisturbed. Unfortunately your fund manager will continue helping himself to his annual percentage whether your money goes up or down.

DIY Active Momentum investing involves buying into funds that are in the sectors on the rise and selling them as the sector starts to fall.

But to be successful at this manoeuvre you must have a constant supply of up to date unbiased fund and sector performance figures. Working on what happened one, three and five years ago simply will not cut the mustard.

Some 50 years ago I was the navigator on a Jamaican banana boat plying between London and Kingston, Jamaica.

During the hurricane season, if we were unlucky enough to be in the path of a storm, the most important thing to have was regular, accurate information on its speed and direction.

Armed with this information we would alter direction, slow down, even turn around. It was an important lesson and also applies to the decision making process for your portfolio.

You must have a regular, accurate supply of fund and sector performance numbers and only then can you make informed decisions to improve and protect your investments.

It is a commonly held belief that it is expensive to switch funds but this is a fallacy.

In today’s world of the Internet and fund supermarket trading platforms you can change for virtually no cost. There are a wide range of good fund supermarket platforms which offer a complete choice of funds and easy to use trading tools.

And they all have very good help lines to make the transaction easier for you to achieve.

You are now managing your ISAs and self-invested personal pensions (SIPPS) and who better to look after your own money than yourself?

But there are a few investment principles that are worthy of consideration when making your decisions: Never trust your intuitions until the market confirms them Do not trade when there are no obvious opportunities Do not try to guess the top and bottom of the market.

This is good advice, but it can be difficult to follow. Remember all you need to become the Christopher Columbus of this new investing world is to have the right tools, the right charts and the right mind set.

Good luck.

Douglas Chadwick, founder of financial website Saltydog Investor