Well Jimbo, there are two leaves that I like to take out of the book of the "$40 Billion man," Warren Buffett ...
Firstly, I prefer to "Ignore the Macro events, and concentrate more on the Micro events." In so doing, he suggests "Concern yourself with the long term prospects of a business rather than attempting to predict the short term fate of the stock market."
He says, "Ask yourself, are you an analyst of the National Economy, or are you a Business Analyst ?"
Secondly, I prefer to "Ignore Stock Market forecasts."
Stay at the Company level, rather than the Market level. I prefer to focus on the performance of a Business, and not to be distracted by larger trends that are often impossible to forecast with any degree of accuracy.
So I’m not one who is in and out of stocks on an hourly, daily or even weekly basis.
I spend my Investing time looking for specific companies with exceptional Fundamentals, that meet or exceed specific criteria.
Once I find a few, I buy some of their stock. I keep them as long as their ongoing Financial Reports continue to reflect the criteria I look for, ... or something better comes along.
What the rest of "the Market" is doing is of no real concern to me. Stock market history has shown that "the Market" has had times of "rise", and times of "falls". I suspect that it won’t be any different in the future.
So if "the Market" has a real "short back and sides" haircut, or if it’s "bull time" or "bear time", so be it.
I suspect that it will be the companies with Exceptional Fundamentals that will most likely be the first to rise above the rest.
With regard to my reporting of over 40% rise in my stock portfolio, I have to admit to a basic maths error. I took the cumulative percentage price rise without dividing by the number of stocks involved. Silly mistake.
At the present time, my 4 stock portfolio is showing +12.77% since the start of the year, although two stocks were purchased later in 2007.
Two of the stocks which are still showing very good Fundamentals, viz. EBIX and WFR, are up 40.6% and 9.56% respectively. I started reporting WFR on the 24th. May.
The other two, AOB and AVTR, did not have as good a set of Quarterlies as in the past, so I’m giving them one more Quarterly. If they fail to meet criteria, they are gone |
