Coming off a roller coaster year in the stock market, it is quite natural to be apprehensive about what lurks as 2012 rolls in. Should you buy stocks in 2012 or if you are out of the market now, than should you continue to wait and see? I will let the professional economists look in… [Read More]
Best Value Investing Blogs, Tips and Articles
Value investing is an investment strategy popularized by Ben Graham and has proved to be a superior investment strategy over long investment horizons. We all like to buy products and services on sale - value investing just extends the concept to buying and selling stocks. It tends to simplify the investment process by eliminating confusing and generally useless concepts often part of the advanced financial and management academic programs. The success as a value investor arises from understanding the business and also by staying disciplined. Therefore, value investing is as much a financial concept as it is a change in investor behavior.
As many enterprising value investors realize after many years of "value investing" in practice, just learning the concepts and methods does not make you into a successful value investors. If this was enough, you would see a large number of very successful value investor mutual fund managers with enviable long term track record. Sadly, it is not so.
In addition to learning the methods and tools of value investing, you have to acquire a certain behavioral attributes that define a value investor. A sincere appreciation of value, a healthy rejection of whatever market sets as the price as a true reflection of value or a given asset, and the guts to stay with own analysis and research for a long period of time DESPITE an uncooperative market.
In fact, the markets are normally against you for most of the time you are invested in any undervalued asset. This created a great opportunity to acquire the asset for cheap, and you did. Wouldn't it be great if once you buy something, the market quickly moves to realized the value for you? Unfortunately, this is not how it works in reality, so you need to be able to call upon a set of behaviors and beliefs to be able to wait patiently for your profits.
At Value Stock Guide, I believe that there is enough material out there that teaches you how to calculate a certain ratio, or create a discounted cash flow model. This is not the secret to investing successfully for long periods of time. The secret to investing successfully for long periods of time is how you act and react at the edges. Do you display conviction in your ideas when the stock goes against you, or do you fold meekly? How do you build up this conviction? Isn't taking the easy way out like everyone else more comforting? Why do you invest - is it because you like the thrill of buying and selling, or is it because you patiently want to see your portfolio grow? Can you sit and watch the paint dry for days, if you know that at the end of the week there will be a substantial reward waiting for you?
I tackle many behavioral and soft side of value investing on these pages. Sometimes I also talk about the concepts. No one has ever become a good investor without building their core base of correct foundational investing attributes. You can do this here.
The articles below explain the concept of value investing, tips and tricks including articles aimed at beginner and advanced investors. Many of the concepts presented here are result of the evolution of value investing practice over time. Original value investing research and strategies are also posted here.
At some point you will wish to start using some of these ideas in your investing. We can help you find the best stocks to buy now and create a well optimized and high performance portfolio.
View articles in other categories: Dividend Stocks, Large Cap Stocks, Mid Cap Stocks, small cap stocks, Macro-economic, Investing Questions, Business, Personal Finance, Investment Guide, Investment Definitions
Further reading
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Stock Research Tools and Methods to Find and Research Value Stocks
There was a time when I used Edgar Online’s I-Metrix tool to do run basic stock screens and pull fundamental data in Excel that I can build my models on. The pro subscription, which you need for the Excel plugin, runs about $5K/year, and while the tool is powerful, I didn’t feel that the value it provides is worth the subscription. Ultimately, I figured, all I needed was the Excel plugin to pull financial data in Excel so I can run it through my models and do my own analysis.
How to Buy Stocks at a Discount?
We all look for the best bargains when we are in the market for an appliance or clothing or an automobile. After all, why should we not save money when we can? Ironically, when it comes to buying stocks, most investors are likely to go with the stock advice they get from friends or media, without paying too much attention to the value. Wouldn’t you want to know how to buy stocks at a discount? Afterall, buying low and selling high is where the profits are made.
Investment Portfolio Management – You Decide to Buy Stocks, Now What?
Investment portfolio: Do s and Don’t s I have taken a position that excessive diversification creates a suboptimal portfolio. Beyond a certain level, further investment diversification does not lessen any more risk, but it does hurt performance of the portfolio. Some readers have questioned my stock investment advice on creating a focused investment portfolio. so… [Read More]
How to Read an Income Statement?
Classic value investing focuses on balance sheet with an understanding that in most industries, earnings power has no value as over time, competition and threats of substitution erodes any competitive advantage the company may possess. While this may be true, income statement should never be ignored. There are a few situations where they become critical to determine soundness of an investment.
Wide Moat Stocks: Finding Investment Moats Using SWOT Framework
As value investors, we look for investment moats. Wider the better. Wide moat stocks are rare as it indicates a competitive advantage and posits that the company is able to defend this competitive advantage, now and in the future.
But how do we see the future?
Over Diversification Brings Diminishing Returns
Asset diversification, as it is practiced today, is a crutch.
From financial advisors, mutual fund industry, media, personal finance bloggers, and every one in between, there is a consensus that diversification is essential for the best investment portfolio you can construct. Nothing can be further than the truth. The fact is, with the state of the investment industry today, your portfolio is very likely to be over diversified than under diversified. After a certain point, over diversification does not add any benefits to the portfolio, but it does take away from the potential rewards.
The New Value Traps
Speaking at the Value Investing Conference, Jim Chanos, President of the Kynikos Associate and a noted short in the market listed 5 different sectors and 5 representative stocks as value traps. He lists Chinese banks (or anything China really), Commodities companies dependent on single governments (such as Vale, 59% of revenues from the Chinese demand),… [Read More]
Balance Sheet Analysis Guide – Understanding Balance Sheet and its Importance
Every business valuation should start with a balance sheet analysis. It is easy to get lost in numbers and a range of what if scenarios when evaluating stocks for investment. While the financial statements may be standardized for GAAP, each line item in these statements have a history behind it that is unique to the company in question. Sometimes one needs to go beyond the numbers to understand the business to determine if the stock in the company under consideration is worthy of investment. Investors often get bogged down in projections and estimates. However a balance sheet is real and known and presents a better indicator of value with data that is more likely to give us a conservative estimate of the value.
Finding the Right Stocks to Buy in Today’s Market
Stock Market Today Stock market today is filled with fear and investor pessimism. The economic conditions in US, Europe and around the world are not making it easy for investors to continue to invest. And with the federal government running up excessive debt, and the inevitable credit rating downgrade by S&P, the future of the… [Read More]
What is Book Value of a Company? How to Calculate Book Value?
The way to identify an undervalued stock is to empirically determine an intrinsic value of the stock that serves as a benchmark against which the stock price can be compared. If this intrinsic value is higher than the stock price in the market today, than the stock can be considered undervalued and vice versa. Over the years, many methods of establishing this valuation benchmarks have been devised and are in use today. Book Value of a stock is one such method.
How to Find Intrinsic Value of Stock?
To know if the price you are paying for a stock is fair, you need to have a good estimate of the value of the underlying business, or the intrinsic value that each share represents. While the stock price fluctuates based on the demand and supply of the shares in the secondary market, the business value only changes when the business conditions change. Over time, the intrinsic value and the stock price tend to correlate, in the short term there might be discrepancies large enough that an intrepid investor can exploit for profit. Learning about intrinsic value will help you value stocks to buy.
Stock Picking Beats Passive Investing if done Correctly
Most of the mutual fund industry and the financial planning establishment will have you believe that the only smart way to invest is passive investing, that is, buy into a heavily diversified portfolio and rebalance your portfolio periodically to achieve the perfect asset allocation. Stock picking, they say, is a fools errand. This assertion is often backed up by statistics and research that seem to offer support for the two most widely promoted apparent truisms in investing:
Why Are We So Clueless About The Stock Market – A Review
Profitable investing in the stock market is not difficult. It does require some basic understanding of how the markets and businesses work. Fortunately, this is not hard to learn.
This is the basic premise of the book “Why Are We So Clueless About the Stock Market” by Mariusz Skonieczny. Mariusz runs the Classic Value Investors LLC, and it is not surprising that he espouses buying stocks when they are priced below the value that the business represents.