And boy is it raining in Europe. Being a contrarian investor is a no-brainer for many of the top investors in the world. It’s just the nature of the business. But being contrarian isn’t always a good idea, nor is it always necessary to be successful. Value for money When I go shopping (a rare [...]
3 Tips for your investment strategy
May 4, 2012 by
I came across a new book the other day called Repeatability, by Chris Zook and James Allen of Bain & Company. Although the book is about building enduring businesses that can cope with constant change, what struck me was how applicable some of the ideas on building a great business were to investing. Three ideas [...]
How to set and use investment goals
April 23, 2012 by
Like most complex and long-term projects, it’s important to have investment goals so that you have a destination in mind at all times. Setting investment goals People invest for a wide variety of reasons, but it generally breaks down into either: a future lump sum or a future income stream. Then you can get into [...]
3 Ways to find a margin of safety
April 12, 2012 by
Ben Graham may not have invented the term ‘margin of safety’, but he did popularise it for investors by making it a core part of his investment philosophy; but what exactly does a margin of safety mean when it’s applied to investing, and how can you go about finding it? A typical example: The bridge [...]
How to become an even better investor
March 30, 2012 by
A long-time reader recently asked: Once an investor has a strategy, how can he develop his potential? What should he be reading, or doing? Once you have a screen with certain criteria, then what? Its in our nature to fiddle, to feel like we are doing something, so what should an investor do to develop [...]
Beating the market – You don’t have to swing for the fences
March 2, 2012 by
This was originally published in the newsletter that I write; apologies if you’ve already read it: “I’ve recently started re-reading the long collection of memos from the chairman of Oaktree Capital, Howard Marks. I didn’t get very far (halfway through the first memo from 1990) before reading something so important that I had to turn [...]
Boring investing is happy investing
February 23, 2012 by
Just about all the money I run is invested using what I’d call relatively defensive strategies. My wife’s pension is in an index tracking portfolio split between stocks, corporate bonds and government bonds. My pension is in a collection of relatively large, profitable, steady growth dividend payers. That’s a pretty big change from the 2008-2010 [...]
