Josh Maher's Blog » Profit
July 4th, 2012 | Add a Comment
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Bill McBride over at Calculated Risk has put together an interesting QE Timeline – in his post he outlines what occured at each of these stages and has included the graphic that I am linking to below. It is interesting to think about the implications that these market manipulation programs have on the overall market. If the programs truly are causal to the market direction, we should be looking at an upward market over the next time period despite the other signs in the economy.
This would be despite Europe concerns, impact of healthcare, hiring, consumer/corporate spending, or any of the other indicators out there. Of course as I mentioned before most of these “market making news numbers” shouldn’t be used in retail investment decisions. Regardless it is important to understand the general … Read entire article »
Filed under: Banking, Covered Calls, ESPP, Investing, Profit, stocks
July 2nd, 2012 | Add a Comment
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The series Investing Lessons from Venture Capitalists has gotten off to a great start. I have looked at a few great investors and found some great insights. Chris Sacca, Fred Wilson, & Howard Lindzon have all provided some brilliant insights by publicly talking about their investment thesis and strategies. Let’s briefly recap them here with a short tweet-able description…
5 Investing Lessons from Chris Sacca
Lesson #1 – The Team Matters
“Invest in teams you would spend a secluded weekend with.” – http://wp.me/pS3iU-kP (CC: @Sacca)
Lesson #2 – Support Systems Are Important
“Pay attention to who is supporting, advising, & guiding the business” – http://wp.me/pS3iU-kP (CC: @Sacca)
Lesson #3 – What Product
“No product – no business, poor product – poor business” – http://wp.me/pS3iU-kP (CC: @Sacca)
Lesson #4 – Customers Make The Difference
“Will someone actually pay real money … Read entire article »
Filed under: Accounting, Banking, Entrepreneurship, ESPP, Investing, Profit, RealEstate, Startups, stocks, Technology
June 28th, 2012 | Add a Comment
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There are a lot of examples of people in Greece and even in the U.S. who work for a living but don’t understand what that really means. They get pay raises and tax raises, they get stock allocations that are worth continuously less, and pensions that disapear. On the other hand there are plenty of examples of people who work to create value in society and earn money above and beyond the money they spend on the increased taxes (this is wealth growth vs. salary growth). Larry the Liquidator explains this better than most…
… Read entire article »
Filed under: Accounting, Banking, Entrepreneurship, ESPP, Innovation, Profit, Startups, stocks
June 25th, 2012 | 1 Comment
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There as been an increasingly interesting discussion about how retail investment is changing. Leigh Drogen (one of the guys behind Estimize), Josh Brown (Stocktwits blogger), and now TechCrunch posted a peice last week from Nick Shalek. Everyone is debating the disruption of retail investing from the likes of Wealthfront, Betterment, FutureAdvisor, etc. I have looked at all of the platforms in the past and they seem to do a good job matching the capabilities of the average broker out there. Go work with an “advisor” from Morgan Stanley and they’ll walk through all of the same risk profiling for the person looking to invest their money and then kindly recommend a nice Morgan Stanley fund that matches the profile.
I haven’t exactly been shy about how crappy a deal this kind … Read entire article »
Filed under: Covered Calls, ESPP, Investing, Options, Profit, stocks
April 16th, 2012 | Add a Comment
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If you don’t get momentum investing, aren’t good at it, or just don’t believe in it… I have a question for you. Do you use twitter, stocktwits, or any other social media tool? Do you leverage the power of the people to filter the best news ideas, comments, and links and still don’t get why momentum investing works?
I am a value investor 90% of the time. I love picking through SEC filings, CEO comments, competitive strategies, and business models to search for businesses that are selling for pennies on the dollar. Occasionally I jump on a momentum play and lose my shirt because I am just crappy at timing those things. I get the fact that momentum investing is jumping on the bandwagon for as long as the bandwagon is … Read entire article »
Filed under: blogging, Investing, Options, Profit, stocks
April 2nd, 2012 | 1 Comment
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Howard spews investing advice every Monday (usually), he talks about the individual companies he invests in all the time on StockTwits and isn’t shy to discuss his reasoning behind each of those picks. As you may have picked up on, the Investing Lessons series that has looked at Fred Wilson and Chris Sacca focuses on lessons that we can take back and incorporate into our own investment strategies. While it may be great to follow Howard into some of his picks (like Pabrai, I’m a fan of cloning great ideas), I think it is more valuable to learn from his examples and discussions about how he invests. Howard recently popped up in a foundville interview and provided some insights into himself and his thought process.
Thinking through the lessons we can learn from … Read entire article »
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Investing, Profit, stocks
March 26th, 2012 | 2 Comments
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You pay on average 1-2% in fees to someone else just so that they can manage your money. This means that even if they are great at managing your money, you are going to lose between a third to a half of your potential earnings over a 30 year timeframe. Of course the research shows that you are likely paying a crappy manager to manage your money in the first place considering the larger money managers significantly underperform independants. Which means that you are likely able to match or beat their performance with minimal effort.
Why do I say that you are going to lose 30-50% of your money? It is pretty simple compounding interest math. As your investment grows, the schmuck you are paying to manage your money earns more money. The tough part … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing, Profit, stocks
January 24th, 2012 | 1 Comment
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Ok, I get it. The account you have at Fidelity where your ESPP shares are dumped each quarter doesn’t allow option trading. Now you read my post on how to sell covered calls against your shares and are lost as to how to make that happen in your account. I thought about this and have been pretty hesitant to walk through the steps to make this work for everyone… If I have to walk you through how to make this happen in your account, are you really ready to start trading options? Well,. being a consultant though I guess I can’t help myself. Selling covered calls isn’t exactly putting on an Iron Condor or Butterfly option strategy. It is simply saying that you already own shares of a firm and … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Covered Calls, ESPP, Investing, Options, Profit, stocks
