Proverbial Talk

A Few Things About Value Investing

By Mika Hamilton

Value investing is the act of investors selecting stocks based upon a perceived value rather than solely looking at pricing trends in the stock’s history.

In fact, value investing may seem to go against convention investment wisdom in many cases because value investors tend to seek out stocks that they believe the market has undervalued. This can include so called “penny stocks” at times, but is more often associated with undervalued stocks on a major exchange such as NASDAQ or the NYSE.

Value investors strategically and actively seek stocks that trade at low values with the intention of getting out of the investment when the market has corrected what the value investor sees as an error in valuation of the stock.

Value investing requires above average insight and savvy concerning the potential value of a particular company’s stock, but it requires a keen sense of perception and skill of research as well.

It is not necessarily riskier than traditional market investing, but does require that the investor be correct about the market’s underestimation of a particular company. When the value investor is correct, she stands to make a lot of money. When she’s wrong she can be sitting on a worthless or low value stock for a long time.

Value investing is based on the idea that the stock market overreacts to both good and bad news regarding companies and the effects of those pieces of information on the potential for a stock’s performance.

This assumption on the part of value investors is usually correct as the stock market is often full of nervous investors who will pull their investments at a moment’s notice or the first, smallest signs of trouble.

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A Guide to Investing

By Jeff Lakie

Article placed here by Mark Scharbaum

Everyone seems to have their own secret or strategy or trick to making money in the stock market. Here are two strategies that have helped many people.

1. It’s your time, how do you want to spend it?

Some people suggest high risk investments and watch them all day. Others say that simply buying good quality mutual funds and hanging onto them for a long time is the best option.

One of the deciding factors for you in developing your investment strategy should be the amount of time that you are willing to spend on monitoring your investments. There is nothing wrong with investing in high-risk investments if you have the time to spend researching, analyzing, and monitoring the price movement. There’s also nothing wrong with the “buy and hold” method, if you do not have the time to spend on watching your investments.

The people who have been very successful in investing are able to match their investment style with the amount of time they can spend on investing.

2. It’s your money, how much can you risk?

The people who have lost everything on the stock market were not careful at managing their money. The stock market is not a gamble, if you’re careful. But you need to be careful in what you buy and how much you buy.

You can decide what is right to buy based on the amount of time you want to spend in the market. Knowing how much to buy is another issue. Don’t put more into your higher risk stocks than you’re willing to lose!

You may find greater safety in buying mutual funds or bonds and if you have money you don’t want to see disappear, those are probably good options for you. If you are sitting on your children’s education fund, you probably do not want to be sinking that in stocks that could potentially gain or lose as much as 50% in a day!

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Tips for Investing

By Jeff Lakie

Many people want to take advantage of the opportunity to invest as a way to supplement their income, but few people have the knowledge or the time to monitor stocks and they are reluctant to pay the high fees associated with full-service brokers.

As well, most people know that a diversified portfolio is the best-performing portfolio, but few people have the huge capital it takes to properly diversify a portfolio made up only of stocks.

One option for those people is to purchase mutual funds.

A mutual fund is a pool of money from a number of investors and it is given to a mutual fund manager to go out and buy a good selection of diversified, well-performing investments.

There are many different types of mutual funds, so there is something out there for everyone. If you like bonds, for example, you can buy a mutual fund made up just of bonds and its return is probably better than most bonds available on the market today because they use a laddering concept to buy and sell bonds strategically. The income from this fund comes from the interest paid on the bonds. These are called fixed income mutual funds.

If you like stocks, there are many mutual funds available for you to consider, from riskier ones to safer ones to funds that trade primarily in overseas marketplaces. You will likely find a mutual fund that matches your risk tolerance, gives you a good return, and provides you with some diversification. The income from this fund comes from buying it the stocks low and selling them high. These are growth mutual funds.

Some of the consistently best-performing mutual funds are funds that are a combination of fixed income and growth. These are called growth and income mutual funds and they combine bonds, dividend paying stocks, and growth stocks altogether in a diversified fund. The income from this fund comes from a combination of bond interest, dividend payments, and growth-style selling. It is an excellent choice for putting in your portfolio. If you can only afford one mutual fund, this is probably the fund to purchase.

Whether you are trying to avoid the fees of a full-service broker, or are trying to invest wisely with a brief amount of time you have in the week, or are simply trying to diversify your portfolio, a mutual fund is an excellent choice. And a growth and income mutual fund, is usually the best choice.

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Playing With Money - And Making More

By Steven Gillman

Article posted by Schlarbaum Capital Management

Ready to start playing with your money? Not interested in complicated businesses or boring bank C.D.’s? Here are some methods that aren’t quite a business because you can do them once, or just whenever you feel like it. Start small and the risk is small.

Loan Sharking

Years ago a friend got a good job when I loaned him $300 to buy the necessary tools. I charged a $6 per week loan fee (don’t call it interest) until he paid in full. That’s more than 100% annual interest, and yes, we’re still friends. Check the laws in your area if you try this, and take collateral. I don’t loanshark any longer, but in my early twenties I loaned as much as $2,000 at a time ($100/month loan fee), and only once was stiffed on a small loan.

Investing In Other’s Expertise

John showed me several car magazines before I understood why an old fiberglass car was a good deal at $2,300. What’s a Corvette? He convinced me to put up the money, and after a new transmission for $900, he sold the 1976 Corvette for $4,300, netting us $1,000. I took half the profit ($500) for putting up the money for the two weeks.

I’ve done this many times with friends who know cars but don’t have cash. Incidentally, if I had paid a $50 cash advance fee and 18% interest to raise the money with a credit card, my profit would still have been over $400, and John did all the work. I love playing with money. Do you have any friends who know about boats?

Buying Estates

My wife and I met a couple who buy out estates, sell some of it at flea markets, then run the rest through auctions. They’ve made a living at this for years. After negotiating to buy a whole house full of stuff, thay load up their trailer. If they don’t want to do the flea market thing, they auction everything on Sunday afternoon for a nice profit.

If you’re a good judge of value and have an auction nearby, you could also do this with rummage sales. Offer $100 for everything, then auction it off piece-by-piece. An auction near us lets anyone in, with no fee to enter - just a 25% commission on anything sold.

Playing With The Casino’s Money

When I worked the roulette wheel at a casino I saw many people foolishly writing down the numbers that came up. Their theories were mostly nonsense. Casinos welcome these players and even hand them the pen and paper.

One man, however, was actually scientific about it. He found a bias in the wheel, after “charting” it for more than 5,000 spins. A number pays 35 to 1, but one of the numbers, due to manufacturing imperfections or whatever, was appearing 1 in 27 spins, instead of the average 1 in 38 spins.

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