buildfirst

In baby boomer politics, the phrase “for the children” is bandied about so often it’s almost a meme. May I say without sarcasm, thank you for the wonderful investing opportunities you’ve created for us. It’s quite noble of you to sacrifice your own retirement portfolios just for the benefit of us children. I hope Medicare, [...]

In March 2009, picking winners was like shooting fish in a barrel. Given the strength of the research I had done and the ridiculous quality of available bargains I should have been more confident in my valuation conclusions. I should have put forth more money rather than treading carefully and investing more later, when good [...]

All investors must ask themselves at some point whether they are doing any better than some average, usually a benchmark index. Small-time individual investors such as myself must consider their performance relative to a broad-based index such as the S&P 500. The question is easy to ask but difficult to answer, as you will see [...]

Today’s big business story is the proposed acquisition of Marvel Entertainment by Walt Disney Co. This is a huge surprise, since Marvel is a newly rising entertainment juggernaut with strong financials and nowhere near exhausting its growth potential. Walt Disney recognizes this in Marvel and is proposing to pay an appropriate premium for the company. [...]

Three basic motivations for learning how to invest wisely are:

1. Beat inflation or your money will simply be worth less as time goes on. There is a big hyperinflation scare right now but it is mostly scaremongering. However, inflation is ever-present in a growing economy. More people make more money, and if there is more [...]

There is a historic new method for investing one’s money. Even more incredible is that it is one of the few financial instruments available to individuals and not to Wall Street*. The average annual yield matches the average annual yield of historic stock market averages such as the S&P 500, without the risk premium [...]

Dad knows best. All the basic rules about managing my money I learned from him. Of course, fancy little details like stock-picking I learned on my own, but I never would have even had the chance to learn those details without the foundation he had given me. The lessons he gave me are absurdly simple, [...]