A Strategy For Stock Hunters
Once the decision has been made to look to stock markets as a place for investment dollars, all retail investors face the same choice – decide for yourself what individual stocks in which to invest or delegate the decision to others. The latter option does involve some research and decision making choosing exchange traded or…
Monetary policy
Since monetary policy affects the rates levied on our borrowings and savings, and pretty well underpins every financial transaction we make on a daily basis, it’s worth understanding the basics. It works simply enough: just as you hold an account at a bank, every bank in turn holds an account at the RBA, technically termed…
Take a dispassionate approach to investing
Investing legend Warren Buffett said to “be greedy when others are fearful”. Or as the 18th century British nobleman Baron Rothschild put it: “buy when there is blood on the streets”. Both billionaires referred to contrarian investing. That is, buying stocks when they are undervalued because of panic selling. And selling overvalued stocks when hype abounds. That…
The Only Thing Certain About Investing Is Uncertainty
Donald Rumsfeld famously called them ‘known-unknowns’ – things we sense are important but don’t fully understand and cannot predict. Bob Dylan put it well, too, when he sneered ‘there’s something going on here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr Jones’. Both point to the investor’s greatest challenge, the absence of a…
Indicator Overload – How Many Are Too Many?
By Vito Henjoto, Technical Analyst, GFT When it comes to technical analysis, the range of indicators available means there’s bound to be one to suit every trader. While this is true, most traders unfortunately take this to mean that more is better, which is not often the case. Technical traders are generally divided into two…
How To Analyse Company Financials
For many investors financial analysis forms the foundation of their investment decision. In their minds, it is the essential component in the process of evaluating a company as a potential share market investment. By digging into the crown jewels of a company’s annual report -the income statement; the statement of comprehensive income; the balance sheet;…
Are share buybacks a positive or negative sign?
I have mixed feelings on share buybacks. The good: they suggest a company believes its shares are undervalued. The bad: the company is running out of growth options and relying on capital-management initiatives to prop up the share price. As a follower of small- and mid-cap companies, I like high-growth companies that reinvest profit, to…
Protecting your portfolio from major downturns
It is nine years after the global financial crisis but we still have ultra-low interest rates. This is great if you are a borrower, but not if you are a saver. If you avoid risk today and invest in interest rate products (cash, term deposits etc), your returns will almost certainly be very low and…
7 Principles For Successful Long-Term Investing
1 – Plan On Living A Long Time Thanks to advances in medicine and healthier lifestyles, people are having longer lives. This chart shows the probability of reaching the ages of 80 or 90 for some who are aged 65 today. A 65 year-old couple may be surprised to learn that there is a 51%…
Being a successful investor
In 2008, John Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group, said in a speech to a conference of Financial Planners: “Investing to me, is all about the long-term ownership of businesses, focussed on the gradual accretion in intrinsic value that is derived from the ability of our corporations to produce the goods and services that our…
