Posts in the “investing” category

A simple way to show many stock quotes and charts

Many moons ago I thought I wrote an AppleScript script named GetStockUrls, whose sole purpose was to open many webpages from finance.yahoo.com at one time. I could run that script, then easily look at the stocks I owned.

Today I found that script on an old Mac computer, and when I did that I saw that I didn’t write it with AppleScript, but instead created it with the Mac Automator. This image shows all you have to do in the Mac Automator to achieve this result. On my current Mac this script opens the Safari browser and opens each URL shown in a new tab. I can then move between the tabs to see what I want to see, quickly and easily.

This image shows what the result looks like in the Safari browser:

Stock market and business definitions (cheat sheet)

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This page is my personal “cheat sheet” of stock market, investing, and business/accounting definitions. I don’t offer many explanations of things, but I generally link to the Investopedia and other sites for more details.

Stock market investing: Moving averages (SMA, EMA, MACD)

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This is a reference page of what I know about “moving averages” in stock market investing. This includes simple moving averages, exponential moving averages, and how to use this data to support buying and selling stocks. I also touch on MACD.

Charlie Munger quote on EBITDA

Charlie Munger, who passed away yesterday at the age of 99, once said something to the effect that “Every time you see the word EBITDA, you should think ‘bullshit earnings’” or “Every time you see the word EBITDA, just substitute it with bullshit.”

He had a way with words. :)

A collection of Warren Buffet quotes

I’ve been an active investor in the stock market since the early 2000s, and almost everything I've learned can be found in the wonderful book, The Warren Buffett Way. Today I’d like to share some wonderful quotes from that book, along with many other wonder Warren Buffet quotes.

A brief lesson on the time value of money

As a brief lesson on “the time value of money,” I’ve paid over $175,000 for caregiving services for my mom, which has forced me to sell my beloved Apple stock (which I had owned since 2009), as well as some Shopify stock that has multiplied even more than Apple. As you can easily tell from this one image, that $175,000 — which I started paying in 2014 — would be worth well over $1,000,000 today.

So, as an example, if I could have kept that $175,000 in the market at the beginning of 2017, it would be worth at least 5x since that time. This is one example of why a certain amount of money now can be worth much more.

Conversely, if you just keep your money in the bank, with the cost of living increasing at about 4% per year, $1 in 2003 is worth about 50 cents today. (Using the “Rule of 72”.)

Warren Buffett: If you could invest in one classmate ...

I found this Warren Buffett quote in this Inc. Magazine article back in 2018:

“If you could invest in only one of your fellow classmates, who would you choose? If you could buy, say, 10% of the future earnings of just one classmate, who would you choose? What would you look for?”

The idea is that you won’t just necessarily look at raw IQ, you’ll look at other personality attributes, such as drive, ambition, and hopefully other attributes like honesty and integrity.

As an investor the only thing that matters is ROI after taxes

An investing company just sent me a very long email filled with hundreds of words and a dozen or more shiny pictures to show how successful they are. Not once did they mention what their return on investment (ROI) was for their investors — which is the only thing that matters.

As an investor, the only thing that matters to you is ROI after taxes; keep your eye on that ball, not the shiny pictures or fancy words.

A “Warren Buffett Way” cheatsheet

This is a bit of a “one off” post for this website, but I’ve been investing a lot lately, and I created the following “Warren Buffett Way” cheatsheet to help me when deciding to invest in a company, or not.

As that title implies, this cheatsheet is based on the wonderful book, The Warren Buffett Way, by Robert S. Hagstrom, Jr.

Eight stocks with share repurchase programs

I just ran across this chart from Morningstar that includes eight stocks with share repurchase programs. In general, I’m a fan of buying the stocks of companies that have share repurchase programs, but, you also have to look into the details of how and why they’re doing this, and you also have to understand the business behind each company. For instance, I’ve never heard of LB, so I looked them up, and I have no interest in investing in an apparel company, so immediately I scratch them off.

Other companies like CAH, MCK, and CVS (who suspended their share repurchase program to buy Aetna) are currently beaten down because of the threat that Amazon will enter their business space, so my first thought is that they’re buying back their stock because it’s at a significant discount. But again, you also have to look into their financials to see how they’re buying back their stock — is it from cash flow? Or are they borrowing money to buy their stock, and if so, how long will it take to pay off those loans?

Warren Buffett has become a lot better investor since the day I met him

“Warren Buffett has become one hell of a lot better investor since the day I met him, and so have I. If we had been frozen at any given stage with the knowledge we had, the record would have been much worse than it is today. So the game is to keep learning, and I don’t think people are going to keep learning who don’t like the learning process. You need to like the learning process.”

This is another quote by Charlie Munger. It reminds me both of working on good programming teams, but also of learning from people that I haven’t enjoyed working with, but learned things from.