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Thought Process On Picking Your First Stock (Guest Post)

Thought Process On Picking Your First Stock (Guest Post)

I’ve had countless queries in the past and a couple of emails recently from readers who are interested to start investing and one of the commonly asked questions is ways to pick the correct stock to invest. The first stock purchase for an investor is always intriguing.

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This post was originally posted here. The writer, Brian Halim is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as 3Fs and has 2169  followers.

The emotions when you first purchase your stock are filled with mystery, excitement, fear and then there’s always the risk and reward. Many will soon get addicted to it and then will proceed with the next second and third purchase and so on.

It’s incredibly difficult to answer this short question to any investors who are asking as there’s legitimately no right or wrong answer. Nevertheless, I’ll try to provide some framework guidance which hopefully can be productive and useful to any investors who’s starting to venture out on their own.

Step 1: Organize a list of companies in your respective region that are big market cap
Your very first step as a beginner should always be looking at the bigger market cap in your respective region. This means looking at the likes of blue chip companies such as Singtel, DBS, OCBC, Sembcorp and SIA in your STI index if you are looking at the Singapore market. In the US market, you will get a list of acquainted well-known companies such as Apple, Boeing, Facebook, Starbucks, Visa and many more.

Don’t buy them yet at this point because there’s many rotten apples hidden in the fundamental of these companies, even for blue chips.

At this point, all you want to do is to get a grasp understanding of:

  • What is their business model?
  • What products do they sell?
  • What competitive advantage do they have over their competitors?
  • How much market share have they acquired?
  • Management capability and their historical financial performance

Most, if not all of these information, are easily available in the annual reports or financial statement of the company where typically management would provide operational quantitative updates on how they are doing or coping with the situation.

All you really need to do at this point is just to spend some time gathering the information and writing some notes down and that’s it. No action should be taken yet at this point because the information you have is public, which means anyone else will have the same information as you do so that’s not really helping you to gain any advantage.

You may also want to segregate the list of companies that are appearing in your newsfeed or newspaper because not all the time they are good. The fact that you read in the newspapers that people are queueing up at McDonald’s does not immediately qualify them to be a good stock.

Always be selective when reading and takes information with a pinch of salt. This way, you will have more questions than answers which is good because it leads you to explore more on your questions.

Step 2: Areas of Competency
Your areas of competency is your competitive advantage over the next other person that you have a lead on.

This lead can be achieved through years of working in the industry and getting to know-how the inside operations of how certain things might work in detail. For example, if you are in procurement, you would know how aggressive your competitors are pricing in their bids for the tender or if you are working in supply chain logistics company, you would better understand the details on transit times, delivery performance, freight claims and customs requirement.

Thus, when you select companies that are in your areas of competency, you are able to value-add your experience to the companies you are prospecting and make better informed decisions from there.

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Essential Stock Market And Investing Wisdoms For Every Investor In 2020 (guest post)

Essential Stock Market And Investing Wisdoms For Every Investor In 2020 (guest post)

If you think Stock Investing is hard, you are right.

If you think Stock Investing is easy, you are also right.

Over time, different legends have emerged from the stock market and these are the wisdom shared that every investor needs to know by 2020.

This post was originally posted here. The writer is a veteran community member on InvestingNote, with username known as Spinning_Top and close to 500 followers.

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12 Market Wisdoms From Gerald Loeb:

1. The most important single factor in shaping security markets is public psychology.

2. To make money in the stock market you either have to be ahead of the crowd or very sure they are going in the same direction for some time to come.

3. Accepting losses is the most important single investment device to insure safety of capital.

4. The difference between the investor who year in and year out procures for himself a final net profit, and the one who is usually in the red, is not entirely a question of superior selection of stocks or superior timing. Rather, it is also a case of knowing how to capitalize successes and curtail failures.

5. One useful fact to remember is that the most important indications are made in the early stages of a broad market move. Nine times out of ten the leaders of an advance are the stocks that make new highs ahead of the averages.

6. There is a saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” One might paraphrase this by saying a profit is worth more than endless alibis or explanations. . . prices and trends are really the best and simplest “indicators” you can find.

7. Profits can be made safely only when the opportunity is available and not just because they happen to be desired or needed.

8. Willingness and ability to hold funds uninvested while awaiting real opportunities is a key to success in the battle for investment survival.

9. In addition to many other contributing factors of inflation or deflation, a very great factor is the psychological. The fact that people think prices are going to advance or decline very much contributes to their movement, and the very momentum of the trend itself tends to perpetuate itself.

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Family Inc: Viewing Your Career as Investments (Guest Post)

Family Inc: Viewing Your Career as Investments (Guest Post)

Since we are on the topic of job switching, I thought of writing some financial and non-financial decision points I considered when making these decisions that I had over the years.

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This post was originally posted here. The writer, Kyith is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as Kyith and 800+ followers.

However, these thoughts are rather jumbled up in the head. And this week, is not the most conducive to think about these things because I am picking up some stuff… that requires a little bit more manpower.

So perhaps that will be left to next week.

One book that have been on my mind to write about was this book called Family Inc.

This is not a very popular book, but you can find a few in your national library. I planned to see if I can do a series on this book because I find a lot of what he talked about my resonate with my readers here.

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Daily Leverage Certificates – A Whole New World (Guest Post)

Daily Leverage Certificates – A Whole New World (Guest Post)

First introduced in July 2017, I felt that DLC hasn’t been well understood by the market for its use and purpose other than being perceived as yet another leveraged product to stay away from. Leveraged products need not be risky when controlled properly and used appropriately. It’s actually an opportunity for retail investors to act and benefit like a hedge fund.

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This post was originally posted here. The writer, Kenny is a community member on InvestingNote, with username known as KennyChia and 300+ followers.

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7 Areas to Think About when Planning for Retirement as a Single Person (Guest Post)

7 Areas to Think About when Planning for Retirement as a Single Person (Guest Post)

I have been single for a large part of my life.And if you are doing some planning for your finances going forward, some aspects that you will think about as a single will be whether there are things that I didn’t realize I need, just because I am single.

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This post was originally posted here. The writer, Kyith is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as Kyith and 700+ followers.

There are some things that I am concerned about, and they do not start with money. The clearest is that in the event of different degrees of disability, how would that affect my life? How much higher cost would I need to support such a change in lifestyle?

Kiplinger came up with an article titled Planning for Retirement as a Single Person that I thought is pretty good. I thought it will be those articles we can gloss over but turns out it covers different aspects.

I listed out some of those points without the flowery words. For the singles like myself, it might be good to take a look and see if you will need to cover some of your bases.

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Buy & Hold (Guest Post)

Buy & Hold (Guest Post)

I been holding the current 9 stocks since 2016.
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This post was originally posted here. The writer, theintelligentinvestor is a veteran community member on InvestingNote, with username known as TII and 1100+ followers.

While there were some stocks that I have bought and sold off, most were done during 2016. There were hardly any position taken after 2017 so we can assume my portfolio as the aggregate of the 9 stocks and also it can be considered it as a buy & hold strategy with the holding period of 3.5 years.

Stocks.cafe provides the daily data of the portfolio time-weighted returns vs the STI ETF or ES3 which can be downloaded to Excel. I have plotted 2 graphs, the top is the my portfolio TII (in green) vs STI ETF (in Blue); the bottom is the difference between the 2 top lines.

The top graph first. The STI, since 2016, has moved within a window of -10% to +32%. The 2016 was quite flat; 2017 was a good year up 20%; 2018 was poor down -7%; and 2019 YTD is up 9%. The first point I want to make is if you are trying to trade during these 3.5 years which quite a lot of world events had happened. Well, you can try to hop in Feb 2016, enjoy the 2 years ride and get off in Mar 2018 and wait patiently for 9 months and get in back again around Dec 2018. Sounds simple but many will know it is not easy. When to get in, when to get out, how long to wait during in and out periods? There are just too many variables and moving parts to make sense of.

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The Astrea V Structured PE Bond – 3.85% Yield for Class A-1 available for Retail Investors (Guest Post)

The Astrea V Structured PE Bond – 3.85% Yield for Class A-1 available for Retail Investors (Guest Post)

Last year around the same time, in early June, Azalea Capital issued their Astrea IV bond.
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This post was originally posted here. The writer, Kyith is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as Kyith and 700+ followers.

Last year around the same time, in early June, Azalea Capital issued their Astrea IV bond.

What was significant was that this was the first bond that Azalea Capital open a specific tranche that retail investors are able to purchase with smaller denomination. The reception for Azalea IV was very good.

And so now, 1 year later, Azalea Capital decide to release the Astrea V.

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Is Investing In Growth Always A Good Thing? (Guest Post)

Is Investing In Growth Always A Good Thing? (Guest Post)

This post was originally posted here. The writer is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as 3Fs.

When investors like us invest in the stock market, the goal is always trying to grow our wealth over time.

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Investors are generally thrilled by the prospect of growth in general, whether they are referring to their income, savings or even the companies that they invest in.

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3 Amazing Growth Stocks Flying Under The Radar (Guest Post)

3 Amazing Growth Stocks Flying Under The Radar (Guest Post)

This post was originally posted here. The writer is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as SmallCapAsia.

 

With a higher than average tolerance for risk, I’m a big fan of growth shares and you’ll find a number in my portfolio.

I’m looking at adding a couple more to my portfolio in the near future and three that I’m considering are listed below.

#1 United Global Limited (SGX: 43P)

United Global Limited is an independent lubricant manufacturer and trader providing a wide range of high quality and well-engineered lubricants.

The company produce their own in-house lubricant brands such as “United Oil”, “U Star Lube”, “Bell 1”, “HydroPure” and “Ichiro” as well as manufacturing lubricants for third-party principals’ brands.

United Global Limited serves clients mainly from the automotive, industrial, and marine industries. To date, the company has a wide distribution network covering over 30 countries.

Source: United Global Limited Annual Report 2017

United Global Limited revenue has been moving in sideways in the past 5 years. Despite that, its bottom line growth has delivered spectacular results. From FY2013 to FY2017, the company’s revenue was hovering around USD 100 million.

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Top Ten Attributes of Great Fundamental Investors

Top Ten Attributes of Great Fundamental Investors

The Top Ten Attributes of Great Fundamental Investors by Michael J. Mauboussin.

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The following is an excerpt of the full report:

“Perhaps the single greatest error in the investment business is a failure to distinguish between the knowledge of a company’s fundamentals and the expectations implied by the market price.”

The world of investing and business has seen a great deal of change in the past 30 years.

This report shares thoughts on the ten attributes of great fundamental investors. Accounting is the language of business and you need to understand it to appreciate economic value and to assess competitive positioning. Investors face a slew of psychological challenges.

Perhaps the most difficult is updating beliefs when new information arrives. Position sizing and portfolio construction still do not get the attention they warrant. The substantial shift from active to passive management has profound implications for the investment industry.

I started on Wall Street 30 years ago today…”

Read the full report [PDF] here.

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