Posts in the “investing” category

“A business that can grow its intrinsic value at 12 to 15% over an extended period of time will create tremendous wealth for its shareholders over time.”

“Long-term competitive advantage in a stable industry is what we seek in a business. If that comes with rapid organic growth, great. But even without organic growth, such a business is rewarding.”

That’s just two of the many good quotes about investing on this valuewalk.com web page. (Features quotes from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.)

This is a good quote about Warren Buffett-style investing:

They like to liken their process to a three-legged stool in terms of the kinds of companies they look for:

• The first leg of that stool is the business model that produces high free cash flow
• The second leg is shareholder-oriented management
• And the third leg is the ability to invest that high free cash flow in areas that will produce attractive rates of return

The quote comes from this Morningstar page. That description is consistent with what you’ll find in books like The Warren Buffett Way and The New Buffettology.

“The great personal fortunes in this country weren’t built on a portfolio of fifty companies. They were built by someone who identified one wonderful business.”

~ Warren Buffett

“A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments. You need to keep raw irrational emotion under control.”

~ Charlie Munger

If you’re interested in investing and would like to somehow invest in “artificial intelligence” and robotics but don’t know how to get started, take a look at the ROBO and BOTZ ETFs (exchange-traded funds). You can either invest in those ETFs, or do your research on them to see what underlying securities they invest in.

If you’re into understanding business financial statements and/or interested in investing, I’ve been reading Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements for the last week or so, and I can confirm that it’s a good book for non-experts like me. With just a few exceptions, all of the terms you’ll encounter on income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements are explained simply and easily.

I just learned that CNBC maintains a Warren Buffett portfolio tracker.

A good quote from Charlie Munger on owning companies (and stocks), from this Seeking Alpha article.

A little sage investing advice from Warren Buffett, from this article.

If you’re ever interested in seeing the stocks that Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway owns, CNBC maintains this Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

Here’s a good article on Verizon’s stock. A few keys: quarterly adjusted earnings were the same as the previous year (no growth); full year adjusted earnings declined; VZ is “poised to benefit greatly under the plan,” with a positive impact to cash flow of $3.5-4B; VZ is overspending their operations (expenses > revenue); tax reform is expected to yield a 55 to 65 cent increase in EPS. (January 30, 2018)

“The old adage is, ‘Bull markets don’t die of old age, they’re killed by higher interest rates.’”

~ Mike Baele, managing director at U.S. Bank Wealth Management

fool.com has this blog post about the projected growth of various robot markets.

If you’re interested in investing, this story, GPUs vs. TPUs: Can NVIDIA Hold On To Its Lead?, is a good read.

suredividend.com has this nice page that summarizes eight rules of dividend investing. I’ve learned a little bit about dividend investing, and it’s helpful to have a summary page like this as a reminder.

How accurate are stock market analysts? If you’re going to invest money in the stock market based on their forecasts, this is an important question.

As technology companies go, Microsoft is a pretty stable, predictable company, so I thought they’d make a good test of analysts’ accuracy. As the image shows, the analysts “hit” on their predictions/forecasts for Microsoft 47% of the time over one year, and 79% of the time over two years. It’s funny/interesting/curious that those numbers are the opposite of what I’d expect; I assumed they’d be more accurate over a shorter time frame.

Analysts were 88% and 93% for Walmart for the last two years; 33% and 40% for Exxon; only 13% and 20% for JC Penney; and just 13% and 23% for Apple.

The image and numbers come from fastgraphs.net.

I’ve been looking into Twitter’s stock lately to see if it seems like more of a Buy or Sell opportunity. The financials are so limited that I can’t make an educated decision that way. For instance, there is no “P/E” because there is no “E.” So I consider it more of a gamble than an investment.

I just started doing some research on the stock of Exxon Mobile (XOM), and these are my notes on their stock. After some introductory notes, all of my other notes are in reverse-chronological order.