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Josh Maher's Blog » Entries tagged with "Dividends"

5 Investing Lessons From Howard Lindzon

April 2nd, 2012 | Add a Comment

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

5 Investing Lessons From Fred Wilson

March 19th, 2012 | Add a Comment

Following up from my last post in the series 5 Investing Lessons From Chris Sacca, I came across this article that Jeff Bussgang wrote on lessons for startup entrepreneurs. Reading the article, there were a few key points that Jeff points out as important for startup entrepreneurs. These are great for the MBAs Fred was speaking to and entrepreneurs, but it is interesting the insight that Fred is providing into his thoughts on investing and how relevant they are to investors in public companies. Let’s look at each of the key points and how they are relevant to retail investment decisions.   Lesson #1 – Embrace Failure Fred observed that failure is typically a valuable and powerful experience—forcing introspection, humility, and an extra drive to prove something to others. He observed that the entrepreneurs he … Read entire article »

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, ESPP, Investing, Startups, stocks

5 Investing Lessons From Chris Sacca

March 12th, 2012 | 2 Comments

There is a lot of hype around venture capitalists, the VC 10x return requirements, their high flying exits when companies like Facebook IPO, and their exclusive carried interest income that is barely taxed. It is certainly well deserved hype, there is a lot of money to be made (and lost) in venture investing, what is interesting though is that the basic principles used in venture investing are principles that any investor can and should use. Have a look at this recent report on GeekWire on the returns of venture captialists, you will see an obvious trend that VCs returns are long term and not short term. The thought here is that these returns are based on longer term fundamental or value investments and not shorter term momentum or technical investments. … Read entire article »

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Investing, stocks

ESPP Options – Account Configuration

January 24th, 2012 | Add a Comment

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

You Have An Employee Stock Purchase Plan Now What?

January 16th, 2012 | Add a Comment

This seems to come up a lot in large companies and having been on the end of not knowing what to do as well as currently being on the end of having some thoughts about different strategies to manage ESPP participation, I thought I would share with everyone. I won’t say that I know everything about investing or managing an ESPP… but I definitely have been using a solid strategy that makes sense. The basic principles of the investment strategy are: Sell covered calls against the ESPP shares This puts cash in my account that I can use to invest elsewhere Ensures that if the stock is sold, it is sold for a profit higher than the 10% Collect the dividends from the shares (Assuming your company pays dividends) This provides money to be invested … Read entire article »

Filed under: career, Covered Calls, ESPP, Investing, Options, Profit, stocks