The Intelligent Investor: Four Extremely Instructive Case Histories

In this chapter, Graham discusses four examples of this kind of careful study:

Penn Central (Railroad) Co., which is an example of a corporate giant that’s rotting from the inside

Ling-Temco-Vought, Inc., which is a company that builds an empire on paper, but is actually pretty fragile

NVF Corp., which is an example of corporate acquisitions gone bad

AAA Enterprises, which is an example of a “hot” stock that’s getting elevated beyond all reason


Chapter 17: Four Extremely Instructive Case Histories
Here’s how Graham sniffed out the rat in each company.


Penn Central (Railroad) Co.
A careful reading of the company’s annual reports reveals that the company had been paying virtually no income tax for a decade. That’s a huge warning sign - if they’re not paying income tax,

• they’re either taking advantage of a ton of tax breaks (which you should be able to discover easily) or
• they’re not really earning much income at all.

How did they do it? They were reporting earnings without “charges” that were going to be taken several years down the road. These “charges,” however, were merely disguising that the company wasn’t really bringing in any income.

What can you do to avoid this? If you see a company reporting good earnings but also talking about “charges” for mysterious reasons that will be dealt with in future years, be very careful. They could be just extending the life of the company on paper when it’s actually in serious trouble.

Ling-Temco-Vought, Inc.
The warning signs? In 1966, the company stated that their assets were less than 5% of the stock value of the company. This means that if the company went bankrupt, the common stocks would pretty much be worthless - something to avoid like the plague if you’re investing for value.

Another warning sign: large investors started dumping the stock in droves. If you see big investors selling all of their stock in a company, you might want to consider doing the same. Watch out for big changes in institutional investing in the public reports on the company.

In 1969, the company reported a loss far bigger than the total profits in the history of the company. In one year, it lost more money than it ever earned - a sure sign something’s seriously wrong.

The way to avoid this is simple:

• avoid any stocks that are valued far beyond their asset value.
• Avoid any stocks that are being sold in droves by institutional investors.
• Avoid stocks that suddenly report a huge loss seemingly out of nowhere.

NVF Corp.
Here, NVF used a number of accounting gimmicks to hide the fact that they were acquiring companies with a huge amount of debt and unsteady business.

How did they do that? The most flagrant sign was that the company claimed an “asset” called “deferred debt expense” that was actually larger than the entire equity of the company. If you started digging into the annual report and figuring out what the items are, you soon realized that the company was actually claiming some debts as assets - and when you got that all straightened out, it became clear that the company was worthless.

You can avoid this by avoiding any company that has unexplainable items on their annual report. If you can’t get a rational explanation of what an element of a company’s annual report is, avoid that company.

AAA Enterprises
If you can’t determine why exactly people are investing in a company, don’t invest. That’s basically the story here, in which a tiny company played a hype game and wound up being valued at 115 times earnings - a number that’s not realistic no matter what the company.

This was all based on potential - much like the “dot com” stocks of 1999 and 2000. Graham’s point? Avoid companies that are selling nothing more than potential. If you can’t see real assets and real business there, don’t invest.

Commentary on Chapter 17
Zweig spends his commentary making modern analogies for each of these disasters.

Zweig compared Penn Central (Railroad) Co. to Lucent. Both companies were among the largest in America, but once you started digging into the books, it became clear that the large company was rotting from the inside, with apparent earnings that weren’t actually based in reality.

He compared Ling-Temco-Vought, Inc. to Tyco, both of which built a big paper empire that wasn’t really based on real-world assets, but instead based on mergers and shuffling.

He compared NVF Corp. to AOL-Time Warner, the best modern example of a merger that completely made no sense in which the minnow swallowed the whale.

Finally, the easy one: AAA Enterprises could have been compared to a lot of dot-com companies (my favorite disaster was Boo.com), but Zweig analogized it to eToys, another classic dot-com disaster.

What’s the lesson? These same tactics keep getting used and keep fooling investors. Be careful.

Ref: The Intelligent Investor: Four Extremely Instructive Case Histories

The real question in value investing

The real question in value investing is how do you identify the lemons that are mixed in with the ‘values’?

Obviously, when you’re digging into “value” companies, you’re seeking out companies that are currently undervalued by the stock market. This can happen for a lot of reasons:

• these companies are boring,
• these companies are not experiencing rapid growth, or,
• more ominously, something nasty is afoot with this business.

The problem with teasing out companies that are up to shenanigans is that there’s no ready made recipe for identifying them. This is where homework comes into play. You need to study the individual companies you invest in. Careful study of a company will often identify fundamental problems in their business plan - and if you see those things, you can stay away.

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2009/02/06/the-intelligent-investor-four-extremely-instructive-case-histories/

The Intelligent Investor: The Investor and Market Fluctuations

Chapter 8 - The Investor and Market Fluctuations

Right off the bat, Graham argues that attempting to play market timing games is a fool’s game. One can never predict true market bottoms or peaks in advance - they can only be seen through hindsight. Graham also points out that some of the “markers” of a bottoming-out market won’t necessarily hold true for the next bottom, and that same effect holds true for peaks as well. In a nutshell, don’t bother trying to time things based on what you think the overall stock market is going to do.

However, for individual stocks, Graham thinks that timing can actually work well. In this case, though, Graham is referring to detailed study of a company: knowing that the company is sound, knowing how it compares to the competition, and knowing what a reasonable value of the stock should be. Once you’ve identified a good, quality company, then you should keep your eye out for the right price on that stock - when it goes below a certain number without any change in the nature of the company itself, then you buy.

This, in essence, is the key of the “buy low, sell high” idea. You don’t try to time the market at all. Instead, you merely seek out bargains in the things that you know, and you wait for them patiently.

What about selling? For the most part, Graham encourages people not to sell into fluctuations, either, and instead hold onto those steady, dividend-paying stocks. The only time Graham seems to encourage selling based on market conditions is if the prices you would get today are significantly out of whack with the long term history of the stock. For example, if the stock has pretty consistently held near a 12 P/E ratio, but is suddenly selling for 20, it’s probably a good time to sell it.

What’s the end result of all of this? A person who diligently follows Graham’s advice is going to almost always be doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing. When the bull market is roaring and everyone is buying, you’re likely to be holding or selling stocks. When the bear market is afoot and everyone is selling, you’re likely to buy up those value stocks.

What about bonds? Graham generally advocates buying bonds when there are no values to be had in the stock market. In other words, if you have money to invest and the stock market is roaring like a freight train, Graham suggests increasing the portion of bonds in your portfolio. Similarly, when the market is down, one may want to decrease the portion of their portfolio that is in bonds if there are appropriate value stocks out there for purchase. Again, it’s the opposite of what seems to be the convention on Wall Street.

Commentary on Chapter 8
Zweig spends most of the commentary ruminating on Graham’s “Mr. Market.” For those unfamiliar, Graham often liked to imagine the stock market as a person he called Mr. Market. This individual was essentially a manic depressive - when the stock market was rocketing, he’d offer to buy or sell you stocks at a price way beyond what the company was worth, but when the stock market was down, he’d only buy or sell at prices far below what the company should fetch. Graham argued that the way to deal with Mr. Market was patience - wait until he quoted you prices you liked.

Zweig uses several modern examples of irrational exuberance to show this “Mr. Market” phenomenon at work - and the dot-com boom certainly gave us a lot of examples. Zweig discusses Inktomi, which went from a peak well over $200 in 2000 to being worth a quarter a share in 2002, even though the fundamentals of the business actually improved over that time frame. In 2002, it was a bargain, and eventually Yahoo bought the company lock, stock, and barrel for roughly seven times that much.

So how can you avoid situations like Inktomi? Know what you’re buying, be patient, and only buy when the getting is good. Not only does this ensure that you get actual bargains, it also reduces the brokerage fees that a more frenetic buyer and seller would accumulate.

Zweig picks out a great quote from Graham that I think bears repeating here.

The investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage.

That, right there, is most of the lesson of this chapter in one sentence.


Ref: The Intelligent Investor: The Investor and Market Fluctuations

Security Analysis for the Lay Investor: General Approach

Chapter 11 - Security Analysis for the Lay Investor: General Approach
How exactly can an individual estimate what a reasonable value of a given stock should be? Graham identifies five key factors that basically define the value of a stock.

The company’s “general long-term prospects”
Ignore what the talking heads are saying and look at the books. Is the company growing steadily? Is this growth actually in line with the stock price, or is the stock price jumping up and down seemingly out of touch with the actual business of the company? If the books are steady, the company is steady, and the prices jumping up and down is the result of talking heads. Be sure to look at a lot of data, though - at least five years, and ten is better.

The quality of the management
It’s hard to judge this. One way to effectively judge it is to watch the annual reports of the company over a long period and see if the management actually does what they say they’re going to do as well as frankly discuss the moves they’ve made. If the management commentary seems not well related to the business of the company, that’s a big red flag.

Its financial strength and capital structure
The less debt, the better, but a little bit of debt isn’t a big scary red flag. Again, look at the long term and see how the company has handled debt over the long term - it should always be low (or steadily going down).

Its dividend record
Graham believes that a company should be paying a pretty steady investment for at least twenty years. If the company you’re investing in doesn’t have this kind of history, that’s something of a negative.

Its current dividend rate
Since Graham wrote this book, companies have gradually shrunk their dividend payments, making the current dividend rate much less of a factor. When Graham was writing, companies typically paid around 60% of earnings out as dividends - today, 25-30% is fairly typical.

One important thing to note about Graham’s five factors is that he’s looking at these stocks as a long term investment that he hopes will return a healthy pile of dividends over that time. He’s not necessarily looking for a big ramp-up in stock price over that period - his “value” comes primarily from the dividends. That’s quite a bit different than how CNBC often talks about about stocks.

Commentary on Chapter 11
Zweig spends the commentary basically taking Graham’s five key factors and putting them in a modern context. For example, for evaluating a company’s long term prospects, Zweig encourages people to visit EDGAR (at sec.gov) and download at least five years’ worth of annual reports. That’s not exactly something that could be done in Graham’s day.

In fact, most of Zweig’s recommendations point people towards using EDGAR, which is an incredible tool for getting straightforward factual information about the status of companies you’re investing in. Zweig points out lots of things you should look for in all that data, but here’s three that stood out to me:

Form 4, which shows what a firm’s senior management has been doing in terms of buying and selling stock. If they’re buying, they believe in what they’re doing. If they’re all selling quite a bit, something’s amiss.

Statement of cash flows, which shows where the money is coming from. If you see a lot of “cash from financing activities,” that means they’re borrowing Peter to pay Paul - not a healthy long term solution.

Revenue and earnings each year for as many years as you can, which can show whether the earnings growth is smooth (good) or very bumpy (bad). No company is perfectly smooth, but if you see a 120% jump in growth followed by a 4% growth followed by a 19% growth followed by 2% shrinkage, consider that a red flag.


Ref: The Intelligent Investor: A General Approach to Security Analysis for the Lay Investor

The Intelligent Investor: “Margin of Safety” as the Central Concept of Investment

Chapter 20 - “Margin of Safety” as the Central Concept of Investment
A single quote by Graham on page 516 struck me:

Observation over many years has taught us that the chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions.

Basically, Graham is saying that most stock investors lose money because they invest in companies that seem good at a particular point in time, but are lacking the fundamentals of a long-lasting stable company.

This seems obvious on the surface, but it’s actually a great argument for thinking more carefully about your individual stock investments. If most of your losses come from buying companies that seem healthy but really aren’t, isn’t that a profound argument for carefully studying any company you might invest in?

Graham takes this point a step further, arguing that diversification is strongly correlated with margin of safety. In effect, Graham states that you introduce some additional margin of safety into your portfolio when you own a widely diverse array of value stocks that each have significant margin of safety.

Graham’s final note is pretty simple: investors get in trouble when they abandon their basic principles in the heat of the moment. One must approach investing with a set of fundamental principles and not abandon them in the heat of the moment.

Commentary on Chapter 20
Zweig closes out this final chapter by arguing that psychology is a major part of investing, one that many people overlook in the rush to find the big bargain. He goes so far as to argue that people are the primary risk in their own investing - poor decision making and abandonment of principles results in far more loss than an investment gone wrong.

Zweig actually ties this to Pascal’s wager, a famous suggestion by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal in which he argues that, since God’s existence cannot be determined through reason, one should behave as though God does exist, since living in that way (as opposed to living as though God does not exist) provides much more gain than loss. Similarly, since one cannot prove what will happen in the future with investments, we’re better off living by our investing principles than playing it by ear.


http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2009/02/27/the-intelligent-investor-margin-of-safety-as-the-central-concept-of-investment/

The Intelligent Investor: Investing in Investment Funds

Chapter 9 - Investing in Investment Funds
Graham basically says that there are three questions you need to answer before investing in any fund.

1. Is there any way by which the investor can assure himself better than average results by choosing the right funds? [...]

2. If not, how can he avoid choosing funds that will give him worse than average results?

3. Can he make intelligent choices between different types of funds - e.g., balanced versus all-stock, open-end versus closed-end, load versus no-load?

Graham states that in general, individuals who invest in balanced funds tend to do better than individuals who invest in individual common stocks. The reason is simple: a person who is not an expert at picking individual stocks and balancing a portfolio is usually better off in the hands of a professional money manager even after the costs.

However (and this is big), Graham largely seems to suggest that the fees in a typical mutual fund are far too high and the time invested in finding a bargain fund (one with good results with limited costs) is well worth the time. He also believes that you should not expect to ever radically beat the market with a fund, and that funds who have astounding short term gains are usually not playing a healthy long-term gain - something that’s been shown over and over again over the history of investing.



Commentary on Chapter 9
Zweig has the advantage of knowledge of three more decades of investing history and he definitely uses it here. For the most part, Zweig applies Graham’s three big questions to modern mutual funds - and the results aren’t pretty.

Zweig seems to conclude that managed mutual funds are not a good investment for the typical investor. Over a long period, very few funds even manage to match the market, let alone beat the market. Why is this? Assuming there were no fees or costs, a truly average fund would match the market and (in theory) half of all funds would do that well or better. However, once you add in fees and costs, this sinks many of those market-beaters to a rate of return worse than the overall market.

Given that, though, Zweig is a big fan of index funds, as they overcome several of the problems with managed funds. They’re designed merely to match the market with an extremely low cost, which means that a typical index fund should beat a solid majority of mutual funds covering the same area.

Of course, Zweig advises that even if you’re using an index fund strategy, you still need to pay attention to diversification and should not have all of your eggs in one basket. Just because you’re invested with index funds doesn’t mean you shouldn’t balance your portfolio between stocks, bonds, and cash.

Ref: The Intelligent Investor: Investing in Investment Funds

Intelligent Investor Notes

This book will teach you three powerful lessons:
+ how you can minimize the odds of suffering irreversible losses;
+ how you can maximize the chances of achieving sustainable games;
+ how you can control the self-defeating behavior that keeps most investors from reaching their full potential.

And Graham’s ticket to that is value investing.

The Intelligent Investor: Introduction
The Intelligent Investor: Investment Versus Speculation
The Intelligent Investor: The Investor and Inflation
The Intelligent Investor: A Century of Stock Market History
The Intelligent Investor: General Portfolio Policy for the Defensive Investor
The Intelligent Investor: The Defensive Investor and Common Stocks
The Intelligent Investor: A Negative Approach to Portfolio Policy for the Enterprising Investor
The Intelligent Investor: The Positive Side to Portfolio Policy for the Enterprising Investor
The Intelligent Investor: The Investor and Market Fluctuations
The Intelligent Investor: Investing in Investment Funds
The Intelligent Investor: The Investor and His Advisers
The Intelligent Investor: A General Approach to Security Analysis for the Lay Investor

The Intelligent Investor: Things to Consider About Per-Share Earnings
The Intelligent Investor: A Comparison of Four Listed Companies

The Intelligent Investor: Stock Selection for the Defensive Investor

The Intelligent Investor: Stock Selection for the Enterprising Investor

The Intelligent Investor: Convertible Issues and Warrants

The Intelligent Investor: Four Extremely Instructive Case Histories

The Intelligent Investor: Four Extremely Instructive Case Histories

The Intelligent Investor: Shareholders and Managements: Dividend Policy

The Intelligent Investor: “Margin of Safety” as the Central Concept of Investment

These are notes from:

The Simple Dollar

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/

How I Deal With My Financial Fears

How I Deal With My Financial Fears
August 14, 2008 @ 8:00 am - Written by Trent

Even though I write a lot about personal finance on here and elsewhere, I still have a lot of my own hang-ups about personal finance. One of the big reasons I started The Simple Dollar was to learn how to deal with those fears, and once I dealt with that new batch, a fresh batch came along. Right now, my biggest fears revolve around taxes, the possibility of a third child, identity theft, and future career directions.

I think this is actually a pretty normal thing for most people. We all have areas where we’re less than confident and we all have areas that concern us about the future.

It’s very easy to push these fears aside and just not worry about them, especially if they’re not vital to our day to day life. We’ll tell ourselves, “I’ll think about that later,” and then when it comes up again, tell ourselves the same thing again, until it’s sat around for years, untouched.

This can really be dangerous. Take, for example, my fear of taxes. I’m making myself face this fear this year and that means I’m digging into an uncomfortable subject, saving for the taxes, and paying them when they’re due. If I had taken the “typical” route and worried about it later, I would be suffering dearly when tax time came around.

What can a person do to step up to the plate and tackle our financial fears? The obvious “just do it!” tactic is nice, but it doesn’t really work here - if it were that simple, we’d already have faced the fear and moved on with life, wouldn’t we? Here are six alternate tactics to try.

Make a list of what exactly makes you nervous
Quite often, a fear of a financial move is actually just related to some small aspect of the move. Spend a bit of time figuring out exactly what it is that makes you afraid. I find that doing this with a pen in hand and a piece of paper in front of me makes it easy for me to jot down thoughts, which I can start working through.

Sometimes what you’ll find out is that you’re actually stressed out about something else entirely or you’re only stressed out by a very small part of the equation. For example, I know one person who was avoiding dealing with his retirement situation because he intensely disliked the retirement specialist at his workplace. It wasn’t a fear of retirement, it was a fear of interaction with someone.

Do some research
One big fear is fear of the unknown. Quite often, a lack of knowledge will make someone afraid of something else - we can all think of examples of this in life, where ignorance makes people afraid.

Don’t succumb to it. If you’re afraid of something because you don’t know about it, investigate it. Hit the library or visit Wikipedia and find out more. Dig in, a piece at a time, until you understand the topic - and the fear of it is lifted.

Talk to someone about it
If something makes you uncomfortable, put forth the effort to talk to others about it. Find someone you trust deeply, preferably someone with some experience in the area in question, and just ask questions.

This might mean contacting a financial advisor. If it does, seek out a fee-only financial advisor, as they won’t be engaged in selling you products and are most interested in just providing information to you. If a fee-only advisor isn’t available to you, you can use another, but be very hesitant to invest or put money in specific places based on their advice - instead, just take their information with you and follow up yourself with your own research.

Write out the pros and cons of your decision
One alternative to having a conversation, especially if the fear is related to an important decision, is to simply write out all of the pros and cons related to that decision.

For example, I kept putting off my decision to switch to a full time writing career. One of the big steps that helped push me towards writing was simply making a giant list of the pros and a list of the cons of making the leap. This really helped put things in perspective, as it became clear I was letting the “cons” guide my way of thinking, even though the “pros” were a much more powerful list.

Spend some time each day thinking about the fear
Don’t let yourself lay the fear on the table, because once you start ignoring it, it’s easy to just let something very important slide by until it’s too late. Instead, add consideration of the fear to your daily to-do list and actually spend a bit of time thinking about the fear seriously.

This is often good to do if you’ve gathered the information but are still hesitant about what to do. Steady and informed consideration of a fear is a great way to make that fear go away. I like to think of my two year old son who fears sharks in his room. After giving him a flashlight to investigate the room and some talk about how sharks need water to swim in and there’s no water in his room, he thinks about this information, overcomes the fear a little, and goes to sleep. Over time, his fear of sharks has become less and less intense.

Take a baby step
Once you’ve made up your mind that you’re going to do this, get started with a first little baby step. Take a little action that moves you in the right direction, and feel the relief that comes with wiping away your fear.

Then, take another little step, and another. Soon, you’ll be well on your way to completely eliminating the challenge that brought you so much fear to begin with. And it will feel really good.

What are your financial fears? Feel free to share them in the comments, and good luck on trying to conquer them.

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/08/14/how-i-deal-with-my-financial-fears/

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself
Fear is the best salesman, after all.
October 2, 2008 @ 8:00 am - Written by Trent

Over the last several days, many readers have asked for my take on the economic crisis. I’m not an economist - my opinion is just that of an average person who has read a number of economics books and talked to a lot of people from all walks of life. Here’s my humble take on the situation.

From Franklin Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, March 4, 1933 (please, listen in):

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve read countless articles and heard countless podcasts talking about financial apocalypse, spreading fear around like mayonnaise on a turkey sandwich. Most of the suggestions are maddening - I’ve heard previously rational people talking about pulling all of their money out of FDIC-insured bank accounts and putting them under their mattresses.

All of this is based on fear, not fact. Over the last few months, several financial institutions have failed, but in each case, the resources of those institutions were immediately absorbed by other companies or, in a few cases, by governmental buyouts. No one has lost a dime in a bank account. No one has lost a single cent of insurance coverage. Many large banks - like Bank of America - have already taken their losses from the subprime mortgages and rolled right through them, and they’re strong enough that they see this as a buying opportunity.

We all know the general storyline by now - these failures were the result of investing too much in bad mortgages. The truth is that no one knows how serious the actual problem is. No one. The ludicrous plan that Paulson proposed last week served one purpose alone - it gave him tons of cash to make sure that the banks run by his cronies wouldn’t outright fail. The truth is that he doesn’t know how bad it actually is. Neither does Bernanke. Neither do you, and neither do I.

The panicked talk, the whispered statements about apocalypse - they’re fear. Nothing more, nothing less.

I don’t claim to know what the “best” plan for resolving the situation is. My level of information about the true nature of the economic situation is extremely limited - and so is yours.

I’ll tell you what I do see, though.

I look out my window here in Iowa and I see the ongoing harvest of one of the largest soybean and corn crops ever - not the cropless Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

I don’t see a single person with a bank account that has lost their deposits, like my grandfather’s family did circa 1932.

I see people going to work, working hard and producing value for their wage, coming home, and buying the things that they need to keep their family going, which puts money directly into the economy.

I see unemployment barely over six percent, not the 25% rate at the time of FDR’s address.

I see industrial production still rising - in 1932, it had fallen by more than half in just three years.

I see a dollar that’s actually strengthening, not weakening, while the price of oil is down sharply from its highs earlier this year.

In short, I see a lot of things that make me optimistic about our ecnomic situation, a pretty stark contrast from the fear being peddled by some. I’m actually much more reminded of 1987, when banks were failing thanks to the Savings and Loan crisis and Black Monday, when the Dow dropped 22% of its value in a single day. We haven’t yet seen anything as worrisome as that, in my opinion - and that was just a drop in the bucket compared to the 1930s.

To put it simply, I’m still not worried a bit, and when I see the fear being bandied about, I’m reminded of FDR’s words.

So what have I been doing with my money as of late?

First, I haven’t taken a dime out of any bank. I haven’t seen any FDIC-insured bank account fail, and none have in the history of the FDIC.

Second, I actually maxed out my Roth IRA contributions earlier this month. Almost all of that money went into broad based index funds - namely, Vanguard’s Target Retirement 2045 fund.

Third, I haven’t made a single change in any plans I’ve had for investing other than the early Roth IRA buy. I’m still following my own game plan.

Now, ask yourself this. If you make any irrational moves, like pulling all of your money out of stocks, does someone profit from it? Of course they do. Your brokerage will make a fee from the sale, and a happy buyer out there will be glad to buy that stock from you at a nice discount. Fear is the best salesman, after all.

My sole piece of advice to you is this: don’t panic. Don’t make any hasty decisions. Sit back and get informed - and don’t just rely on one source for information, either. Get a bunch of different angles on what’s happening, from liberals and conservatives and moderates alike. If you’re worried about your money, do your own research and find out reasonable things to do with it. Take a serious look at what people who really know what they’re doing are doing with their money - in the last two weeks, Warren Buffett has invested $3 billion in General Electric stock and $5 billion in Goldman Sachs stock (an investment bank … weren’t we supposed to be afraid of those?) - he sees this current situation as an opportunity to buy, not sell.

And one more thing. Even in the darkest heart of the Great Depression, 75% of Americans had a steady job with a steady paycheck, which they steadily used to buy the things they needed. Those years also produced the Greatest Generation and an economic steamroller that ran through the last half of the Twentieth Century like a tidal wave.

It was true 75 years ago. It’s true now.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.


http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/10/02/the-only-thing-we-have-to-fear-is-fear-itself/

Facing My Financial Fears: Estate Planning

Facing My Financial Fears: Estate Planning
November 22, 2006 @ 12:11 pm - Written by Trent

This week, The Simple Dollar is doing a five part series on financial topics that scare me just a bit. Researching and then writing about them will (hopefully) alleviate some of that fear
Other fears include buying a car and Roth IRAs.

Until recently, I’ve not thought about the need to plan for my passing in any real form. With what little I knew, I was pleased with intestacy for determining my assets, which basically meant that my wife gets everything, or in the event of simultaneous passing, my son gets everything, or in the case of a family disaster… well, I really didn’t care - the intestate law in my state was perfectly fine by me.

The first step I made in the direction of estate planning is that I simply drew up a list of specific items that I wanted specific friends and family to have upon my passing. Again, this is no real problem; I trust my wife to distribute these items.

But then I began to wonder what would happen if we both passed, and a whole nightmarish can of worms opened for me.

At first, I was just fine with intestacy, meaning that all of the cash would simply become the property of our son, but then I tried to imagine what would happen if our infant son was left with our full insurance amounts and in the hands of his guardians (the only aspect of our will is the definition of guardians for our son; we make no mention of any assets so intestacy will apply and probate can be avoided) and, as much as I trust them, I wondered what potentially might happen with that money.

I realized that I needed to set up a living trust so that my desires for my assets are clearly followed in the event of my death, but I’ve avoided the process because of the apparent complexities of such an instrument. Successor? Grantor? Trustee? Signing my assets over to the trust? It all made little sense to me and the documentation I’ve found in extensive internet searching isn’t entirely clear, either.

Every time I look at my son, though, it gnaws at me a little more. I’m failing him because of my own ignorance and avoidance of a situation I don’t understand, I keep telling myself. I know that the process is relatively simple and I know that I need to do it, but there’s one thing holding me back.

Fear.

Writing this has made me step up to the plate. I have set up a brief meeting with our family’s attorney, who will answer my questions for me for a very agreeable fee. I hope to enter the process of setting up a living trust as soon as my questions are answered.

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2006/11/22/facing-my-financial-fears-estate-planning/

Facing My Financial Fears: Investment Risk

Facing My Financial Fears: Investment Risk
November 23, 2006 @ 12:01 pm - Written by Trent


This week, The Simple Dollar is doing a five part series on financial topics that scare me just a bit. Researching and then writing about them will (hopefully) alleviate some of that fear
Other fears include buying a car, estate planning, and Roth IRAs.

My fear of financial risk goes back to the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent bank collapses of the early 1930s. My grandfather was a young entrepreneur in the late 1920s who held almost all of his assets in either stocks or in a local bank; between 1929 and 1931, he lost everything he had. After that, he did all of his savings in large glass jars.

This rubbed off on me as a child. I would watch him keep money in jars all over the place on his property and when I would ask him why he didn’t put it in a bank, I would get a very angry old man railing about how banks stole all of his hard-earned money and that they’re all crooked.

I eventually started a savings account at a local bank, but before I did I insisted on a copy of the FDIC guarantee on the account and, for almost my entire life, I’ve either held my money in my hands or kept it in that bank.

This fear is really my grandfather’s fear, I guess; I worry that I will simply lose everything I have if I entrust it to others. Whenever I make a decision to move my money, I still do it with extreme care, checking the history of the bank and the insurance on the accounts. I now have savings at three different banks, though it took me a while to reach that point.

The next step was taking the risk of investing in a retirement plan. Even with 100% matching from my employer, I felt on some level that I was “giving away” money. I spent an entire day asking all sorts of questions to a financial planner (who apparently later indicated to others that perhaps I was a bit paranoid) before finally investing in a 403(b).

We’re not even talking about the risks of investing in the stock market, though once I was able to push through that first barrier, I began to slowly look at other types of investment as well.

I spent most of the last year carefully examining the possibilities of a mutual fund, thinking about it, weighing the multiple levels of risk (in my mind), and finally, I pushed past that fear. I opened a mutual fund account and made my first investment within the past week.

It was a major psychological hurdle for me to cross, but it is exhilirating to know that my money is now actually working for me instead of merely sitting somewhere, just reinforcing my fears.

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2006/11/23/facing-my-financial-fears-investment-risk/

The Value of Personal Trust

The Value of Personal Trust
April 7, 2008 @ 12:30 pm - Written by Trent

A really good discussion about personal trust and honesty developed out of the most recent reader mailbag that I thought was worth discussing on its own. First of all, I made a pretty big mistake in my answer. I made a giant assumption that the readers called me on, and it’s worth discussing further.

On a very regular basis, I give cash gifts to people I trust who need them or could, at the very least, use them. I take this out of money that I have and just give it to people that could use it. I’ll give some cash to a relative to help that person cover their power bill. This is something that’s common and normal to me.

When I do this, I am pretty picky about who I give the cash to, but if they’re someone I trust personally, I don’t hesitate to do it. If I found out my grandmother was having difficulty keeping her house, I’d be right there with a check in hand to help her. If one of my cousins that I trust was trying to start a business and needed some seed money, a check would be in the mail in a heartbeat. I almost always do this without asking, and I don’t expect a dime back from them.

Why do I do this? I don’t need any sort of written agreement to know that if I needed something, these people I trust would be there for me. When those people are in a pinch, I will help them, no questions asked. When those people are trying to reach for a dream, I will try to boost them if I can.

To me, personal trust and personal relationships like these are more valuable than money. I can’t possibly put a cash value on knowing that if I lost my home, my family, my children, my job - everything - there are people who would take me in and care for me. I was able to make the leap to being a full time writer because of the support and trust and help given to me by family and friends. I rely on this - it’s an integral part of who I am.

Here’s another way to think about it, through the eyes of charities. I tend to not donate to charities unless I know them well. I need to either be intimately involved myself or have someone I deeply trust be involved before I’ll donate. When I do build that trust, though, I’ll write checks to those charities without even thinking. I’ll evangelize for those charities. I’ll do what I can to help them, because I trust them. I don’t worry any more about whether my check is really helping - I trust the charity, so I don’t worry about it. I don’t worry about what I’ll get out of it - I just trust that they’re doing the right thing for something I care about.

Quite often, I assume the same kinds of dynamics in other families and friendships - and I did so to my own detriment earlier. My response to a reader question about what to do with extra cash was to give it away to a trusted family member or a trusted friend, which is exactly what I would do. I’d look for someone I trusted and use that money to seed something they wanted to do, and I’d be very liberal about it.

My response, which basically just assumed much of this, said to give the cash to a trusted family member and then that family member would probably help with college. I also suggested that giving this money away - because it would provide the added kicker of helping with one’s financial aid case, might be unethical to some, but I considered it completely fair because it’s within the rules - nowhere does it outlaw giving away your money. I did not advocate sheltering money - that’s against the rules entirely.

This was met with instant derision that I was advocating truly cheating the system, and looking back on it, I can see where the outrage came from. The outrage comes from the sense that you should never trust anyone when it comes to money, and that’s a sensible and safe philosophy to live by. The only drawback is that you limit yourself in how much you can trust others, and that cuts you off from some things. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It’s a personal call each person has to make.

A reader asked me:

Let’s turn the tables. If you randomly received a check for $10,000 in the mail from a relative with no note, what would you do with it? What do you think they would want you do to with it?

I’d probably call them up and ask them why they sent it. If they said, “It’s help for you getting started with your writing career” or something like that, I’d give a big “thank you” and put it in the bank. I can think of a lot of other reasons why I’d just happily accept the gift, and they’re mostly borne out of trust and long-term trusting relationships with people.

Honestly, I wouldn’t really question the gift very much, and this in itself is a demonstration of what I’m talking about.

Furthermore, I’m planning already to give my nieces and nephews some gifted financial help when they go to college. I have no obligation to do so. But their parents have helped me a lot during my young adult life.

Should that be reported on the FAFSA? I think it’s ridiculous to think so. There was no implication whatsoever that any help my brother or sister-in-law gave me, in the form of gifts or personal help or advice, was to be repaid in the form of some assistance to their children. If they had a windfall and mailed me a check right now without a note, I’d still not think of it as any sort of implication that I should assist their children with college.

This all translates directly to my advice to the earlier family. In essence, giving that money to Uncle Phil is just another kind of investment. It’s an investment in people, in trust, in a bond that can’t be quoted in dollars. If you give that money to Phil when he has a good use for it, you’ve probably cemented a bond with someone who will help you in countless ways throughout your life, in ways you see now and ways you don’t, in ways you can measure in dollars and cents and ways you can’t.

From my perspective, trust is about helping people you care for because you can and because you want to, not because you’re obligated to.

If this kind of trust seems alien to you, then you’re not alone. There are a lot of people out there who are guarded, and it’s usually because they’ve been bitten after trusting someone, or they’ve heard too many stories about trust falling apart. They call such trust “naive” or “foolish” - and maybe it is.

But when I go back to my hometown and spend an evening around people I trust that deeply, I realize I wouldn’t trade that sense of trust for anything in the world. It’s that valuable, if you can find it.

So what did I learn? First, I learned that assuming things about the relationships between others can usually get you into hot water. I assumed far too much about the trust in relationships in this family, and because of that, I gave advice that was probably not the best advice to give. I gave advice from my own heart, based on what I would do in that situation - if I had money that I was trying to get rid of in order to get in a better state for financial aid, the first place I’d look is my family, the people that I trust. In a family without that trust, my advice was horribly bad - it either implies an illegal financial agreement or it suggests just tossing your money into the breeze and watching it fly away. Trust makes all the difference, and I assumed too much of it.

Second, I learned that when you give money to others, the worst-case scenario is usually assumed by others. If I give some money to my uncle or my cousin, it’s reasonable to think that others are assuming I’m doing it for personal gain over the long haul, that I must be expecting to be paid back in some fashion. That’s not how I view the world, and viewing it that way takes a big stretch for me.

I’ve explained how I view trust, and how that view can skew things. How do you view trust? How deep does it go? How much value does it have for you? Have you ever been hurt by trusting too much? Have you ever been helped by relying on a trusting relationship?


http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/04/07/the-value-of-personal-trust/

Personal Finance and Intrusion

Personal Finance and Intrusion
April 18, 2008 @ 8:00 am - Written by Trent

I’m worried about my grandmother’s finances. She lives on Social Security and a small pension from the state, but if that were all there was to her story, it would be fine - she owns her residence and is just fine in terms of taxes and debt. The problem is that her oldest son still lives with her and is a constant drain on her financial state. He’s simply incapable of holding down a job.

My grandmother is far too caring of a person to allow one of her children to be out on the street, so she allows him to live with her and has likely agreed to leave her home to him when she passes on.

The end result of this situation is that there are two adults living on a small pension and one person’s Social Security benefits. This worries me and makes me sad on a daily basis - I think about her and really wish there were a way I could help her with her situation. The only problem is that if I do financially assist her, that assistance will translate directly into spending money for her son, who I don’t really want to help because of how he’s draining away my grandmother’s golden years.

A big part of me wants to intrude in this situation. I want to somehow be able to storm in the door and somehow make everything all right for my grandmother.

In the end, though, this intrusion would serve no real purpose. She’s a grown woman with a caring heart who has the power to make her own choices, and she chooses to spend her extra money taking care of her son. It has very little to do with how I feel about it - it’s really her choice, not mine.

I hear often from readers who are faced with a similar situation in their own lives. They see a financial mess in the life of someone they care about and they desperately want to intrude in it. Much of the time, I feel like they’re writing to me for “permission” - some sort of approval of their intrusion.

My reaction is pretty much always the same: don’t intrude unless it directly affects you and even then, only intrude in business to the extent that you need to to protect yourself. Don’t stick your nose into someone else’s business - all you’ll do is create resentment and almost always you’ll fail to solve the problem you wish to address. Often, you’ll make the problem worse.

Instead, just let the people you care about know that you’ll help them if they need it, in the form of advice or financial assistance or whatever the situation calls for. Sit down with just that person (or persons), let them know that you care for them, and let them know that you want to help them specifically, but don’t push them. Let them make the choice - it is their life, after all.

Of course, some situations demand that you protect yourself, and you should always take any measures you feel are necessary to protect yourself. Just make sure that everyone involved in that protection is on the same page - that means, if you’re married, talk over such decisions with your spouse.

As for my grandmother, I talk to her on the phone every week and I’ve had a few conversations with just her about her situation, just letting her know that if she ever needs anything at all, I’m just a phone call away and I’ll help her in any way that I can. But I won’t make her pick up that phone - it’s her life to lead and her choices to make, even if I don’t agree with the choices.


http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/04/18/personal-finance-and-intrusion/

The Intelligent Investor: The Investor and His Advisers

The Intelligent Investor: The Investor and His Advisers

December 19, 2008 @ 8:00 am - Written by Trent

This is the eleventh in a weekly series of articles providing a chapter-by-chapter in-depth “book club” reading of Benjamin Graham’s investing classic The Intelligent Investor.

Warren Buffett describes this book: “I read the first edition of this book early in 1950, when I was nineteen. I thought then that it was by far the best book about investing ever written. I still think it is.” I’m reading from the 2003 HarperBusiness Essentials paperback edition. This entry covers the tenth chapter, which is on pages 257 to 271, and the Jason Zweig commentary, on pages 272 to 279.

I found it very refreshing that in this chapter, Graham didn’t just focus on professional investment advisors when using the term “advisor.” Instead, under this umbrella, Graham included relatives, friends, local bankers, brokerage firms and other investment houses, financial service providers of all stripes, and professional finance advisors.

Why is this distinction important? We don’t just get our financial advice from “financial advisors.”

Take this blog (and countless others like it). We’re not financial advisors. I tend to think of myself as closer to the definition of “friend” than of financial advisor. I’m simply out here sharing my own reflections and experiences, letting people know where I succeed and where I fail.

Take the talking heads on CNBC. Those people may be financial advisors, but they’re speaking in a role where they’re not actually providing financial advice. They’re actually just being entertainers. Have you ever seen the disclaimer that precedes or follows any segment with Jim Cramer?

Yet there’s all this advice out there, and we do incorporate it into our knowledge, whether consciously and directly or not. The question is how can we know what knowledge is actually worthwhile and what isn’t? What advice is worth paying for and what isn’t? That’s really what Graham is seeking here.

Chapter 10 - The Investor and His Advisers
Even though this chapter is fairly long, Graham’s principles for how to deal with personal finance advisors - and personal finance advice - are pretty simple.

Be wary of all advice. You should never absolutely trust anyone with your money. Couple their recommendations with your own research and have an idea of what you want. Don’t just follow blindly with whatever an advisor says.

Avoid people who claim absurd returns. If returns seem to excessively beat the market, stay away. Almost always, it’s either a scam or it’s a person playing a very short term game that’s likely not to work next year. In either case, you don’t need their advice.

Stick with certified advisors or advisors from large, reputable houses. You’ll have to pay for both of these, of course, but the advice here is pretty good if you’re just seeking what a well-informed and cautious investor might be doing.

Truly defensive investors may not need advice at all. Defensive investors stick with high-grade bonds and common stocks of large, stable corporations and are likely to want to know exactly what they’re buying. In that case, you should be doing the research yourself - advisors might only be helpful in special situations (like a giant windfall, for example).

Make your advisors prove themselves to you. Just because someone has some impressive accomplishments in their past doesn’t mean that they’re guaranteed to be a great advisor. Be limiting in your trust until they show you repeatedly that they’re providing great advice for you.

Commentary on Chapter 10
Zweig puts more of a modern spin on Graham’s advice in the commentary. He seems to be even less inclined to recommend financial advisors than Graham is, arguing that one should only hit a financial advisor if you’ve tried things yourself and are experiencing waters that are far more turbulent than you’d like.

Zweig’s mantra? Research, research, research. Find out everything you can about your potential advisor before you even begin taking advice. Google them, find out about any complaints (using http://www.advisorinfo.sec.gov/), and ask around about them.

When you decide to give one a shot, don’t just dive into their advice. Zweig offers two long pages of questions you might want to ask a new advisor in order to get to know where they stand on things.

The biggest flag of a good advisor (from Zweig’s perspective) is interest in your specific situation. Are they asking about your budget? Your goals? Your frustrations? Your psychological makeup (asking about how you handle conflicts)? A good advisor will want to know all of these. If they’re not asking, they don’t care, and that’s dangerous.

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/12/19/the-intelligent-investor-the-investor-and-his-advisers/

Where Do You Get Your Financial Advice?

Where Do You Get Your Financial Advice?
November 14, 2007 @ 10:00 am - Written by Trent

Some of my most faithful commenters have personal finance blogs of their own, and one of them, Mrs. Micah, asked a question that really got me thinking: where do you get your financial advice?

The more I thought about the question, the more I realized that the answer isn’t as obvious as it seems at first, so I’ll progress through my ideas about that question.

My first and most obvious answer is the personal finance resources that I read regularly, like personal finance books, blogs, magazines, and so on. Most of the raw personal finance information that I absorb comes from these sources.

But that’s the easy answer. Where do I really get my personal finance advice? To me, advice means more than just absorbing information from others - it also includes the situations where people provide direct comment on my own life and how I live it.

In that light, my biggest source for financial advice is my wife. She might not be the most informed individual about how to eke out an extra percentage from my investments, but she does know me - who I am, what our situation is, and where we’re going. Often, I’ll collect the data I need for various points of view and then present them to her, and together we talk through the situation and determine a plan. When I’m trying to make a decision about my financial situation, she is the first person that I turn to.

If that’s not enough, I turn to my parents. They generally offer lots of good arguments for staying the course in whatever I’m doing, simply because things have turned out all right so far since I began turning my financial ship around. Before then, I didn’t really talk to them at all about my finances, but I’ve come to find them to be excellent advisors when I’m troubled. I’m also coming around to talking to my mother- and father-in-law about things, but since my relationship with them is still relatively young, I sometimes don’t ask such strong questions of them.

After that, I listen to my readers. Quite often, if something is still troubling me, I’ll voice that concern in the form of a post here at The Simple Dollar and then take all of your comments to heart. Often, writing the post makes the answer clear; other times, I’ll rely on your comments for guidance. Often, you say what I’m already thinking; other times you rip my ideas to shreds. Either way, you aren’t afraid to pull punches and call me out when I’m getting overly confident or am looking down an inconsistent path.

If that’s still not enough, I turn to meditation and/or prayer. I take in all of the advice that I’ve heard and spend some time in deep meditation. The answer - the truly right answer - then comes from within. I won’t debate whether that’s a subconscious thing or a supernatural thing, but I find that such steps are often the key to me finding the right answer.

Those are my key sources for financial advice. I start with information (books, magazines, blogs), talk to those who love me, reformat that question as an article that addresses my readers, read the responses, then take all of that and meditate on it. In the last year, these sources have served me incredibly well.

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/11/14/where-do-you-get-your-financial-advice/

Building Knowledge

25 Rules to Grow Rich By #11: Building Knowledge
November 27, 2006 @ 10:23 am - Written by Trent


Rule #11: If you don’t understand how an investment works, don’t buy it.

The sheer hubris of the above statement is incredible. “Leave the real money makers to the experts; you go along and play with your savings account at your local bank, junior.” It’s typical of the attitude of many people in the financial sector as they try to play Prometheus, bringing the fire of financial knowledge from the gods of Wall Street.

The fact is that most investments are not all that complicated. If you are interested in a particular investment, pick up a book at your local library (or your local bookstore) and read about it. This is an opportunity to learn something that could be directly useful to your pocketbook, not an excuse to run for the hills like a coward.

I agree that you should never buy an investment that you don’t understand, but merely saying, “I don’t understand it, so I’m not going to buy it” is a losing philosophy. You’re much better off saying, “I don’t understand it, so I’m going to learn about it.”

Let’s rewrite that rule:

Rewritten Rule #11: If you don’t understand how an investment works, do some research before you invest; don’t just write it off.

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2006/11/27/25-rules-to-grow-rich-by-11-building-knowledge/

25 Rules to Grow Rich

Money Magazine’s 25 Rules to Grow Rich By - Reevaluated

November 13, 2006 @ 12:06 pm - Written by Trent
Categories: 25 Rules To Grow Rich By

Recently, I had the opportunity to read and reflect upon an article in Money Magazine entitled 25 Rules to Grow Rich By, a brief piece outlining 25 basic financial principles that should, in theory, bring about financial success. As a young person looking to build the foundations of a financially successful life, my first read-through of the rules made me reflect on my own lifestyle in relation to each rule. Was I following that rule? Was I really following this one?

But as I thought about them, I began to wonder how valid each rule really was. Were they actually sound financial rules, especially for someone in my shoes? Or was it just an off-the-cuff article, not really meant to be taken seriously? I began to wonder, so I began to consider them more carefully and to dig a little deeper. What I found was a lot of accuracy, but the accuracy varied depending on the audience of the article.

Over the next twenty five weekdays, I’m going to evaluate each rule in detail, discussing mostly the pros but also the cons. The perspective that I’m going to use is generally my own (with a bit of additional fact-based research), meaning that I’m looking at this list through the eyes of a twentysomething who is climbing out of debt and has (most of) a lifetime of financial choices still to be made. Which rules apply to me now? Which ones will apply in the future?

If you want to keep tabs on this series, bookmark this post. I will be using it as a table of contents for the series, adding each rule to the list below as I post it. At the end of the series, this post will tie together extensive reflections on Money Magazine’s 25 Rules to Grow Rich By.

So, let’s start wandering down the yellow brick road together, shall we?

Rule 1: For return on investment, the best home renovation is to upgrade an old bathroom. Kitchens come in second.
Rule 2: It’s worth refinancing your mortgage when you can cut your interest rate by at least one point.
Rule 3: Spend no more than two times your income on a home. For a down payment, it’s best to come up with at least 20%.
Rule 4: Your total housing payments should not exceed 28% of your gross income. Total debt payments should come in under 36%.
Rule 5: Never hire a roofer, driveway paver or chimney sweep who is going door to door.
Rule 6: All else being equal, the best place to invest is a 401(k). Once you’ve earned the full company match, max out a Roth IRA. Still have money to invest? Put more in your 401(k) or a traditional IRA.
Rule 7: To figure out what percentage of your money should be in stocks, subtract your age from 120.
Rule 8: Invest no more than 10% of your portfolio in your company stock–or any single company’s stock, for that matter.
Rule 9: The most you should pay in annual fees for a mutual fund is 1% for a large-company stock fund, 1.3% for any other type of stock fund and 0.6% for a U.S. bond fund.
Rule 10: Aim to build a retirement nest egg that is 25 times the annual investment income you need. So if you want $40,000 a year to supplement Social Security and a pension, you must save $1 million.
Rule 11: If you don’t understand how an investment works, don’t buy it.
Rule 12: If you’re not saving 10% of your salary, you aren’t saving enough.
Rule 13: Keep three months’ worth of living expenses in a bank savings account or a money-market fund for emergencies. If you have kids or rely on one income, make it six months’.
Rule 14: Aim to accumulate enough money to pay for a third of your kids’ college costs. You can borrow the rest or cover it from your income.
Rule 15: You need enough life insurance to replace at least five years of your salary–as much as 10 years if you have several young children or significant debts.
Rule 16: When you buy insurance, choose the highest deductible you can afford. It’s the easiest way to lower your premium.
Rule 17: The best credit card is a no-fee rewards card that you pay in full every month. But if you carry a balance, high interest rates will wipe out the benefits.
Rule 18: The best way to improve your credit score is to pay bills on time and to borrow no more than 30% of your available credit.
Rule 19: Anyone who calls or e-mails you asking for your Social Security number or information about your bank or credit-card account is a scam artist.
Rule 20: The best way to save money on a car is to buy a late-model used car and drive it until it’s junk. A car loses 30% of its value in the first year.
Rule 21: Lease a new car or truck only if you plan to replace it within two or three years.
Rule 22: Resist the urge to buy the latest computer or other gadget as soon as it comes out. Wait three months and the price will be lower.
Rule 23: Buy airline tickets early because the cheapest fares are snapped up first. Most seats go on sale 11 months in advance.
Rule 24: Don’t redeem frequent-flier miles unless you can get more than a dollar’s worth of air fare or other stuff for every 100 miles you spend.
Rule 25: When you shop for electronics, don’t pay for an extended warranty. One exception: It’s a laptop and the warranty is from the manufacturer.

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2006/11/13/money-magazines-25-rules-to-grow-rich-by-reevaluated/

The Best Money Advice, in Ten Words or Less

The Best Money Advice, in Ten Words or Less
June 30, 2009 @ 8:00 am - Written by Trent

About a week ago, I challenged my followers on Twitter to give me their best single piece of money advice in ten words or less.

I was flooded with responses.

After spending quite a bit of time sifting through them, here are the fifty best pieces of advice that came my way (out of well over a hundred - I actually used a spreadsheet to help me figure out the best ones to include). All of these are stellar money tips - and all of them come in with ten words or less. Enjoy.

writealvaro: Don’t invest in what you don’t understand.
mmmeg: I only need one word! ASK!
The_Weakonomist: index emergency fund to unemployment. 9% = 9 months.
MichaelBRubin: Spend more time, less money.
fiscalgeek: The secret to money management is learning to be content.
pearbudget: Know what really matters. Don’t spend money on other stuff.
creditgoddess: Don’t borrow more than you can repay.
dgstinner: A fool and his money are soon parted
jacobmlee: Be mindful of how you spend money.
JoeTaxpayerBlog: Don’t walk away from 401(k) match, regardless of debt situation.
EdenJaeger: Live below your means and save all you can.
tonyblacknyc: Better to sell a little early than a little late.
Kplavcan13: Pay yourself first, you can’t give yourself a bill.
dweliver: Be content with what’s yours and you’ll always have plenty.
centsiblelife: Spend less than you earn. Earn more.
MoneyEnergy: Don’t save at 2% when you’ve got debt at 10%.
thefinancialqb: If you try to get rich quickly, you will go broke fast.
ObliviousInvest: Diversify. Minimize costs. Stay the course.
Matt_SF: Borrowing money for a depreciating asset is a fool’s errand.
benburleson: If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it.
mapgirlsfc: Save regularly and spend less than you earn.
jj_observations: Learn to love left-overs!
tusharm: Don’t spend money that you don’t have.
danielckoontz: Never reach for yield.
randypeterman: “Where will you & your stuff be in 100 years?”
Cat8040: Don’t take on debt.
KasyAllen: Don’t be afraid to ask for the savings!
nhldigest: Best money advice “Don’t Spend More Than You Earn”.
Green_Panda: My advice: Change one money habit at a time.
MoneyEnergy: Don’t count all your chickens before they’ve hatched.
fcn: Save and invest for the long term.
MyLifeROI: If it depreciates, don’t pay interest on it!
jessw61: Save/invest as much as you can.
Lisa_S_47: working hard doesn’t mean you deserve anything you can’t afford.
mtswartz: I’ll do it in two: Spend Less!
GlennLucas: Prevent your government from bankrupting your nation.
myfindependence: Be thrifty but don’t forget to enjoy yourself
spendingsmart: You can’t outearn dumb spending.
randallkirsch: A penny saved is more than a penny earned.
Grumpicus: Use credit cards, NOT debit cards.
flexo: The only one who cares about your money is you.
ceetastic: Before purchasing, I ask myself, “Can you justify the expense?”
moneyhighway: Money comes and goes the memories stay
robertsm85: If you don’t have the money then don’t spend it.
roryboy: if you need to use plastic, you can’t afford it!
msimonkey: Keeping up with the Jones’s is plain stupid.
maverickstruth: Know what comes in, and what goes out.
crazy_eddy: Let your assets buy your toys.
sfordinarygirl: Buy generics/private label because it’s way cheaper
jasonbob7: One word: leftovers!

Now, how about you? What’s the best money advice you can give in ten words or less? Leave yours in the comments!

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2009/06/30/the-best-money-advice-in-ten-words-or-less/

As an investor can I rely on technical analysis?

Wednesday July 1, 2009

As an investor can I rely on technical analysis?
Personal Investment - A column by Ooi Kok Hwa

Investors need proper training as this area requires a lot of subjective judgement and experiences

ALL the famous investment gurus in the world, like Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett, say that we should not try to time the stock market because we will not be able to predict its movement.

However, professional technical analysts believe that investors are able to time the market by looking into the historical price trends and trading volumes. They believe that the weakness in fundamental analysis is it is unable to provide the timing to buy or sell stocks.

Fundamental analysts are able to detect good quality stocks for long-term investments. However, they do not know when to accumulate or to dispose the stocks.

Technical analysts believe that a lot of good fundamental factors for certain stocks may have already been reflected in the stock prices. As a result, any investor who would like to purchase the stocks may not be able to make gains as the stock prices have already included the good fundamental factors.

Nevertheless, if investors know technical analysis, they may be able to discover the stocks much earlier than the others. A lot of time, these fundamental factors may not be made known to the public.

However, some investors, who are aware of these fundamental factors, may start accumulating the stocks. Technical analysts believe that these early actions can be detected by looking into charts.

Technical analysis is based on the interaction between the supply and demand for the stocks, which can be caused by the rational and irrational factors.

Technical analysts believe that prices move in trend and can persist for a long time until something happens to the stocks.

Even though technical analysts do not know all the factors that influence the buying or selling of all stocks, they believe that investors are able to know the actual shifts in the supply and demand of stocks by looking into their market price behaviour.

One of the advantages of technical analysis is that it is simple to use. Compared with the fundamental analysis, investors do not need to read financial statements before using technical analysis. Nevertheless, investors are still required to have adequate knowledge on how to interpret various types of charts.

Given that there are many types of charts, investors may get confused as some charts may indicate buying signals while others may indicate selling signals.

Sometimes, when there are too many investors using different types of charts, the effects may be neutralised between each other.

For market efficiency believers, they postulate that it is not possible make any gains by merely looking into stock prices and volumes because they believe that the stock market may have reflected all these factors. They label this phenomenon as weak-form of market efficiency.

In most academic researches on testing weak-form stock market efficiency (testing the market based on stock prices and volumes), they discovered that investors cannot consistently outperform the market.

Fundamental analysts believe that by merely looking into technical charts alone may sometimes cause investors buying into poor fundamental stocks.

However, technical analysts argue that these negative factors can also be detected using charts because poor fundamental stocks will normally face heavy selling by investors.

The technical charts will indicate when the stocks start facing selling pressures and investors need to sell the stocks once the charts indicate the selling signals.

Some investors believe that there may be self-fulfilling prophecy on technical analysis.

When many people are using the same technical chart on one company and the chart shows a buy on the stock, many investors will follow to buy the stocks. These may cause the stock prices to go up and reinforce the idea that the technical rules work.

We believe that investors need to know both fundamentals as well as technical analysis as these two methods can complement each other. Both methods have their strengths and weaknesses.

Sometimes we may want to use fundamentals to identify the stocks for purchase, then, use technical analysis to gauge when to buy the stocks; or we can use technical analysis to select stocks and use fundamentals to confirm the quality of the companies.

In conclusion, as technical analysis requires a lot of subjective judgement and experiences, we believe that investors need to have a proper training in this area. Interested investors are encouraged to read books related to this area to have better understanding.

Ooi Kok Hwa is an investment adviser and managing partner of MRR Consulting.

http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/7/1/business/4228156&sec=business

Budgeting for Future Success

Today's world and workplace are considered a "global village." Telecommunications and air transportation make finance, technology, and labour available to a world economy. Increased knowledge and skills will be required to compete in the changing workplace created by the world economy.

To be prepared for a career in this new world, people will need a variety of skills. The use of budgets is one such necessary skill. Allocating money, solving problems, and making decisions are skills needed to create and use either a personal or business budget. These skills are also critical for people who want to be ready to achieve personal and professional success.

If you learn good budgeting skills and are able to apply them to different situations, people will take notice. At your current job, you can impress your employer by suggesting possible budgeting improvements. If you help your boss now, he or she will help you later. Maybe your boss will write you a good recommendation for a future job. Or perhaps he or she will help you find a good job when you finish the present posting. Whatever the case, using your budgeting skills now can only benefit you in your future career.

You will also find that balancing your current budget, no matter how little money it may involve, will help you balance your personal budget in the future. You will be making more money when you begin your career, but balancing your budget then will involve the same steps that it does now. That way, when you do begin to earn more money - and possibly even have to balance a budget that includes a spouse and children - you will be well prepared to do it.

Success with budgets can be achieved. Many people start with basic personal budgets when learning to budget money. Tracking budget items and adjusting the budget over time gives experience that can be used with more complex budgets. Budgeting your allowance prepares you to budget when you have income from a job, for example. And budgeting part-time earnings prepares you to budget for your own business someday.

A budget may not make you rich. But when used with creativity, budgets can provide a sound basis on which to make decisions that will be easy to live with.

Good budgeting skills will get you noticed in the highly competitive workplace. Questions to ask yourself:

• How can knowledge of budgetting help you in your career?


• Would budgeting help you if you owned your own business?


• Would a budget be useful if you had a family of your own?

A reputation build over 30 years can be destroyed in 5 minutes.

30 Jun 09, 17:32
RR: If you don't believe, or have some doubts on him.. then just forget about ICAP.
30 Jun 09, 17:32
RR: If TTB is my real life buddy, i think i would have put 90% of my portfolio with him. Just wanna stress again, ICAP = TTB. Believe TTB, hold/buy ICAP.
30 Jun 09, 17:30
RR: cause i actually believes WB said "I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will. "
30 Jun 09, 17:30
RR: So.. so far.. I am not with ICAP yet:) I mostly invest in things that the business itself has its own edge, without really counting on the person in charge.
30 Jun 09, 17:25
RR: the only doubts will be, is TTB a person who I can really believe in? A person with integrity where I can put ALL my savings with him? I personally am not sure..
30 Jun 09, 17:22
RR: So.. my 2 cents is that, if you believe in TTB that his investing style works and he will be employing this investing method as long as he lives. I think, you should keep holding the stock.
30 Jun 09, 17:21
RR: You believe what TTB believes. We believe him, because he has been publishing his method of investing for some time. We believe that he will continue with that style.
30 Jun 09, 17:17
RR: However, it is hard to see any durable competetive advantage ICAP has over other funds. ICAP is all about TTB.. If you are buying into ICAP. You must have known TTB well.
30 Jun 09, 17:16
RR: Taking RM1.80 as current price, ICAP has around 16% compounded return since 2005. As for me, ICAP is one of the business that I can understand and its performance is easy to track.


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RR, I find your reasoning interesting and would like to offer my comments here:

The track record of iCAP closed end fund is short. Yes, it has given a very good return (cumulative total return and compound annual return). This cannot be extrapolated to future years. Investment returns are often unpredictable.

Over the longer term, it is generally expected that most funds will give returns close to those of the market returns. This is based on statistics and probabilities. We know that. In fact, given the cost of some funds, most funds will give returns lower that the market return.

If you are an enterprising investor, like Leno, with a proven track record, you should continue your own investing. On the other hand, if you have been an investor who has lost money consistently or with a very poor return from your investment, you should seriously consider whether you should be doing your own investing or otherwise.

The issue of integrity of the fund manager is important and cannot be treated lightly. In the light of Madoff, one cannot be too careful. But then, how do you judge integrity in the person? Review how you judged a person to be your business partner or a lady to be your life partner. What criterias did you use? What outcomes, deemed important, did you factor into these criterias? As much as you and I like to be totally objective, often judgement is also a very subjective matter.

Warren Buffett has written on integrity. He would like his managers to have integrity, intelligence and lots of energy. Above all, integrity. Without integrity, these traits of intelligence and energy in the manager will work against the interest of the owner.

Like Warren Buffett, we should only invest in a fund manager with integrity, intelligence and a lot of energy. The managers of these funds also realise the importance of their integrity in their business and their relationship with their investors. A reputation build over 30 years can be destroyed in 5 minutes.

This assessment of the integrity of the fund manager can best be summed up as difficult, subjective and based on your personal views. This view is also influenced by your interactions with others and this fund manager in the same industry. Eventually, in the majority of situations, it is a personal opinion.

For the defensive investor, what are the options? My personal advice, don't even buy a share, if you are not familiar with equity investing and the market place. It is far too dangerous a place for someone with no investing or financial education. Therefore, park the money in FDs and be grateful for the 'safety of capital' and meagre return these offer. But the risks are those of inflation eroding the real income and capital, and also, not meeting your investing objectives.

The next best thing, is to have friends or relatives who are able to invest for you or to advice you on your investments. I was fortunate to have this guidance for many years. But beware of professionals with some knowledge. I have known of investors who ask their remisiers for some stock recommendations with varying results.

Then, you are still faced with how to invest your money safely, for higher return, over a long period. Who do you turn to now?

Here is my suggested approach to investing into icap fund or any other funds. We start with a very big assumption, that the fund we invest in will perform reasonably well under a good manager, and over the years, the manager will continues to grow the value of the investment.

For the investors of the fund, it would then be the simple matter of investing into the fund at the time when it was trading at a bargain, usually coinciding with the market at a low point. However, there is still another important factor to consider.

It was Peter Lynch (I think), who wrote that during his tenure of his fund, the majority of investors who bought and sold his fund lost money. This was despite the fund growing in value at a compound annual rate of 30% or so, for almost 30 years.

The inference, even if you have selected the right fund or fund manager, your returns may be negative due to factors unrelated to them, but to yourself.

This is what I do for a portion of my money. But then, you are not me. Your circumstances will definitely be different. So, please follow your own analysis and make your own decision. You are the better judge of yourself, always.


Also read:
Games people play
To be a winner, choose the games one wishes to play in carefully. Investing is likewise not dissimilar. One need to have the investing knowledge before "playing this game" intelligently, lest one ends up not winning but losing.

Where is your focus in your investment returns?

Are you focussed on absolute return and capital preservation?

Or, are you more focussed on relative return to a certain benchmark?

Perhaps you are more focussed on one or the other at different market environments. Certainly these are food for thoughts.

But then, it was also ridiculous to an individual investor, for his fund manager to talk about beating a certain market benchmark during the recent severe bear market when the absolute return of the fund was negative and the capital was also down by a large amount!