Josh Maher's Blog » Entries tagged with "Value Investing"
Seattle Angel Conference III
Tweet You may have noticed the slight increase in posts related to early stage investments and investing lessons from angels & VCs. This year, I am participating in the Seattle Angel Conference as an investor and have been learning a lot as I spend a few hours each week with 20+ other brilliant investors vetting companies. The experience is forcing me to put my thoughts about investment forward and explain to people how I view the world of investment opportunity vs. what others may see. It is highly stimulating and is most certainly making me a better investor of all types of assets. I have slowly been collecting my thoughts on the process itself and want to share those as well. The premise of the group is simple – a bunch of … Read entire article »
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Investing, Startups, 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
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 »
Berkowitz on investing in funds
Tweet With Bruce Berkowitz closing his mutual funds (FAIRX, FOCIX, FAAFX) to new investors, there looms a question on the ability of mutual funds to perform well under the regulatory constraints. The question also arises for individual investors about what they should be investing in. Should they rush into one of the Fairholme funds before the doors close for good or should they look at the stocks that Bruce would rather be more exposed to and simply invest in those directly? Bruce covers this topic in more depth in an interview on Bloomberg… … Read entire article »
Investor Training
Tweet I have a few more in the Investing Lessons from Venture Capitalists in the works and will post them in the coming weeks. Of course anyone interested in investing in public or private markets and businesses should look at more than just VCs for lessons. A few must read guides for investors – I have these on my Kindle and re-read them occasionally as the messages here are amazing reminders of what I need to focus on when evaluating companies and properties to invest in. I know that some of you just pick a few ETFs, participate in your employer’s ESPP and call it good (Don’t get me wrong – I love that strategy so long as you are not only betting on the company you work for and have … Read entire article »
It Takes Two to Tango
Tweet I get a lot of feedback about my Covered Call ESPP strategy from efficient market theorists. They tell me that I will make and lose money on the trades based on the efficiency of the market. They commonly forget that markets are composed of people and when it comes to individual transactions there is a buyer and a seller. Howard Marks ranted about this in a recent letter (see below). The fact that transactions have buyers and sellers means that while the market may display efficiencies, each transaction Understanding who is on both sides of the transaction is important. If you are looking to make a new investment of any kind, an Angel investment, a Real Estate Investment, or purchasing shares of a business on a public market you need to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Investing, RealEstate, stocks
