Investing lessons from Dave McClure
Tweet I was pleasantly surprised to see Jonathan Sposato channeling my investing lesson series in his new member-only series Startup Jedi. Great to see that people like to convey information this way and especially exciting that topics such as what the hell are startup investors looking for is interesting to more people than just me! I haven’t profiled Dave McClure yet, I have profiled some other interesting investors such as Howard Lindzon, Chris Sacca, Fred Wilson, Chris Devore, Jeff Clavier, and others on the way. I had previously avoided McClure as he comes across as such a loose cannon. At least the things that he appears to be investing in and the reasons he appears to be investing appear much more on par with a day trader than they do an investor. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing, Startups, stocks, Technology
Investing in lotteries
Tweet Investing is often difficult to discern from gambling, in fact many day trading strategies are based on the same principles of successful gambling. By successful gambling, I am referring to those gambling strategies that leverage the statistical odds built into the wager system to strategically pull out a profit and not the casual betting you and I may do at the school auction. I was recently at an angel investing conference here in Seattle. The conference was put on by the great TechStars Azure team and was focused on explaining the angel investing process. There were a variety of angel investors speaking from professionals like Geoff Entress, Chris Devore, and Andy Sack to angels who also have a day job like T.A. McCann and Christina Storm. During the talk, one comment struck me as … Read entire article »
Tools to research value stocks
Tweet If you are the Ben Graham type and are looking for stocks that are incredibly undervalued… so much so that they may not even be traded, I have found these tools to be handy on some occasions… Conference Call Transcripts Unlisted Stocks … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing, stocks, Technology
Spray and pray investing
Tweet I came across this post by Dharmesh Shah titled Avoiding Undue Diligence: My Strange Approach To Angel Investing. I was of course intrigued by the title having spent a lot of time building this library of investing insights from venture capitalists and angel investors. I was surprised to find a nice neat list of investing nuggets laid out on the page like the ones that I extract from the many interviews and blog posts that I find from investors. The surprise of course was what I found after digging into Dharmesh’s advice. He had laid out a very nice spray and pray approach to angel investing. No follow-on investments I have heard a lot of people advise, but no due diligence? Seriously? Two guys walk into a bar, they make a good first impression … Read entire article »
Funds vs. Market
Tweet Stock Market growth has been tied to mutual fund growth since the late 1980s when Mutual Funds began to take over as the primary investment vehicle for individual investor’s retirement accounts. Fast forward to 2011 and the correlation seems to be broken. This is pretty significant and means that equity is being allocated to other investment vehicles and there are other investment vehicles driving the market growth. Foreign investments, ETFs, Hedge Funds, Pensions, individual stock purchases, ESPP investments, etc. All potential changes to investor behavior that is driving this change in what drives the stock market’s performance. The important thing to note about this macro change is that the things that used to drive changes in the market – namely mutual fund managers making decisions based on career risk – are changing … Read entire article »
Global financial assets
Tweet This was posted in a Financial Times article and I thought it was interesting how the outstanding non-securitized loans have a nice parity with the stock market capitalization. Also of interest of course is the estimated 2012 numbers – $209 Trillion will be the highest level yet. It seems in line with the trend last year of rising corporation earnings and valuations. … Read entire article »
Investing Lessons from the World Financial Symposium
Tweet If you haven’t been following the series on investing lessons from venture capitalists, now is a good time to start. The latest in the series comes from some great insight that was provided at the World Financial Symposium here in Seattle. The question of course that everyone has next is what the hell is the world financial symposium and why is it in Seattle? Amazingly of course the angel investors on hand at the symposium generally had the same thought in response to the always outstanding question of why isn’t Seattle a bigger startup community? Regardless of the amount of angel and venture capitalist investment that happens in the region, there is an amazing amount of talent on the entrepreneur and investor sides of the table. Some of the lessons from … Read entire article »
Filed under: Economics, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Investing, Seattle, Startups, stocks, Technology
The amazing Mr. Graham
Tweet I have been a student of value investing for some time now and like most value investors that includes studying the quotes and teachings of Benjamin Graham. This has mostly been through books and through the analysis provided by other value investors. Like most other value investors I don’t focus on just Mr. Graham and I read most great value investors such as this post from Tren Griffin on Charlie Munger’s the psychology of human misjudgment. When I came across this video on Benjamin Graham, I was pleasantly surprised to find a great review of Ben Graham including interviews with Warren Buffett, Edwin Schloss, and others. At risk of repeating the same thing you’ve already read five times last week I include the video here. … Read entire article »
