Showing posts with label Stocks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stocks. Show all posts

Friday, July 8, 2016

Facts and Fallacies About Creating Wealth



Many commonly accepted “facts” about wealth building are, in fact, fallacies.
Take these six as examples:
  1. “Risk and reward are inversely correlated. If you want to acquire great wealth, you have to be willing to take great risk.”
  2. “Wealthy people are stingy for a reason. Pinching pennies is a necessary part of building wealth.”
  3. “The most important factor in building wealth is ROI — the rate of return you get on your investments. When investing in stocks and bonds, therefore, look for high ROIs.”
  4. “A well-balanced investment portfolio is comprised primarily (80% to 90%) of stocks and bonds, with the rest (10% to 20%) in cash or cash equivalents.”
  5. “The surest way to acquire enough money to retire is to buy the most expensive house you can afford and gradually pay off the mortgage.”
  6. “Asset allocation is the single most important factor in building wealth.”
Those are the fallacies. Here are the facts:
Fact No. 1:
The intelligent wealth builder takes advantage of safe bets and avoids risky ones. He does this as an employee, a business owner, and an investor. He understands that smart financial decisions are cautious decisions. When he must take a risk, he does so with some sort of loss limit in place. He never loses more than he is comfortable losing.
Fact No. 2:
Spending money prudently is an economic virtue, but being stingy — i.e., paying less than market value for goods or services simply because you can — is a flaw. The rich man who undertips does so not because he has learned the value of money, but because he is simply a cheapskate. It’s as simple as that.
Fact No. 3:
The most important factor in wealth building is not ROI but the accumulation of net investible assets, the amount of money you’re able to devote to investing after you’ve paid for all your regular expenses — your car, home, debts, and loans. Plus, individual investors, chasing yield, typically get ROIs that are less than half those of market averages. This is why the intelligent wealth builder devotes the lion’s share of his wealth-building time to increasing his income and setting realistic goals for his stock and bond portfolios. By “reasonable,” I mean market averages plus or minus 10%.
Fact No. 4:
The typical portfolio of stocks, bonds, and cash — however allocated — is an inadequate approach to building and safeguarding wealth. The intelligent wealth builder will also include other assets, such as income-producing real estate, tangible assets, alternative fixed-income investments, and direct investments in cash-generating private businesses.
Fact No. 5:
Buying a more expensive home every time you get a big raise is a great way to ensure that you will never get rich. What you want to do is find the least expensive house you can “love long time” and keep it. The longer you keep it, the more net investible income you will have to invest in income-producing assets that will eventually make you rich.
Fact No. 6:
Asset allocation is indeed very important, but it is only one-third of a larger strategy that truly is most important. I’m talking about risk management. Risk management has three parts: asset allocation, position sizing, and loss limitation. The intelligent investor pays equal attention to all three.
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Four More Facts
Okay, those are six facts that dispel the common fallacies. Got a few minutes more? Here are four more facts, some of which are very basic but often ignored.
Bonus Fact No. 1:
The biggest mistake retirees make is giving up their active income.
Yes, I know that’s exactly what you hope to do. But to keep your wealth for a lifetime, you need multiple streams of passive income. Your goal should be to build each stream of income to a level where you can live on that and that alone.
Bonus Fact No. 2:
The “miracle of compound interest” applies not just to money but also to skill and to knowledge. If you want to get rich and stay rich, you need to invest as much of your spare time as possible in acquiring financially valuable skills and learning about your business.
As a general rule, buying makes you poorer, whereas selling makes you richer. If you want to develop a wealth builder’s mindset, develop the habit of asking yourself every time you buy or sell anything: Is this making me richer or poorer?
Bonus Fact No. 3:
Every type of financial asset has its own unique characteristics in terms of growth potential, income potential, and risk. Expecting more growth or less risk than “normal” from any investment is a bad idea. And that is why 90% of ordinary investors have results that are far poorer than market averages.
Bonus Fact No. 4:
There are two ways investments can build wealth. One is by generating income. The other is through appreciation — an increase in the value of the underlying asset. Asset classes are inherently structured to increase value, preserve value, or do both. Investments that provide both income and appreciation are generally superior to investments that provide only income or only appreciation. But in developing an overall strategy of wealth building, the prudent investor will incorporate all three types of investments.
You may find some of these facts instantly sensible. Others you may disagree with, be confused by, or see as unimportant. But don’t just read them and dismiss them, please. Give yourself a bit of time to think about them. For me, they are useful and important because they worked for me and for people I mentored — and they worked over and over again. Which means, of course, that they might work for you.$

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Thursday, March 31, 2016

Choose Investments That Keep Risks Low And Profits High


“Be not penny-wise: riches have wings, and sometimes they fly away of themselves; sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.” – Francis Bacon (Essays, 1625)

If you get up early and make good use of your time, you will have a higher-than-average income. If you commit to saving a significant portion of that extra income and check your net worth every month, your net worth will grow quickly. How quickly depends on three things:

1. how much you invest
2. how long you keep it invested
3. what rate of return you can get
The traditional idea about investment returns is that the more you want to earn the more risk you have to take. Today, I’d like to talk about how to get a higher-than-average return with much-less-than-typical risk.
Let’s start by assuming that you begin a 20-year wealth accumulation program with monthly savings of $1,000. Saving $12,000 a year should not be a problem for you even if you are starting out. I've shared many ideas in previous blog posts about how to increase your income.
Let’s make another assumption. Let’s figure that by working hard and smart you are able to increase that $12,000 by $3,000 a year. That is well within the reach of anyone committed to wealth building.
And finally, let’s assume you are 45 years old and have 20 years of income-producing years in your future. (If you are younger than that, the numbers I’ll show you will turn out to be much, much more favorable.)
Over a 20-year time period, putting away the savings mentioned above, the total “extra” income you’ll have socked away will be about $800,000. That’s not bad. It shows you the power of consistent savings.
Now let me show you the power of boosting your savable income. Let’s assume, again, that you started by saving $12,000 a year. But instead of increasing that amount by $3,000 a year, let’s say you add $6,000 — a modest $500 a month. In that situation, your accumulated savings will amount to about $1.4 million.
But let’s say you do better than that. Let’s imagine that your financially valuable skill allows you to increase the amount of money you can save each year by $12,000 ($12,000 the first year, $24,000 the second year, etc.). In that case, your 20-year saving spree will total $2,520,000.
Two-and-a-half million dollars is a lot of money. It would put you among the solidly wealthy. Not revoltingly rich, but financially independent.
You can definitely do that well by sticking to a straight money-building program. But the numbers I’ve cited so far do not include the effect of compound interest. They show what you’d get if you hid all that extra money in your mattress.
If you put all that extra money in long-term treasuries and earn an average of 3% interest over time, you’d have about twice the amounts cited above. If you could do better than that — say, 5% — you’d end up with four times that much. 7% would give you about five times that much. And 10% would give you about six times that much, or between $5 million and $15 million.
This demonstrates something you already know: If you can get your return on investment (ROI) up into the double digits and keep it there, you can get rich — even very rich. It’s not easy to get 10% over time, but I believe it can be done if you invest in businesses you know.
Start by dividing your assets into four categories:
1. your home
2. secured loans
3. passive investments
4. active investments
You know what “your home” means. “Secured loans” include Treasury bonds, municipal bonds, mortgages (that you give, not take), and highly collateralized private loans. “Passive investments” cover the kind of things that most people think of when they think of investing. This includes individual stocks, mutual funds, options, futures, etc. The final category, “active investments,” identifies any investment you make in a business in which you play an active, often controlling, role.
Because I’m a strong believer in “diversified” investing (balancing your investments so that you don’t have too much money in any one area), I make it a personal habit to try to have a substantial amount of money in each of these four categories. In fact, if you want my recommendation, I’d say you should have no less than 10% and no more than 40% of your money in each category. For planning purposes, you might want to start off with the idea that you’ll have equal value in each category.
For each of these categories, you need to reduce your risk and increase your potential return. The way to do this is the same for all four categories: Invest in what you know and keep learning about what you are investing in.
Let’s see how this applies to your home. To be sure that your home appreciates in value, don’t buy a house until you really know the local real estate market. Spend the time you need to scout around, to speak to people, to watch what’s going on. When you are confident you know the good neighborhoods, the up-and-comers, and the overvalued properties, do what the real estate pros recommend: Buy a modestly priced house in an good or up-and-coming neighborhood. 
The next category — secured loans — is an important but usually overlooked part of any wealth builder’s investment portfolio. Secured loans are wonderful because they pay a decent rate of return — higher than bank savings accounts — with virtually no more risk. To make things simple, I recommend tax-free municipal bonds. If you go for the safe ones — triple A — you’ll get about 4.75% return today. That equates to about 7% to 8% before taxes.
Next, you’ll want money in the stock market. For reasons I’ll tell you about later, I recommend that you select a balanced mutual fund that is meant to “track” the Dow Jones Industrials. Don’t mess around picking individual stocks or timing your investments (pulling them in and out of the market depending on economic conditions and other factors). Just put your money in and let it enjoy the historic 9% return stocks have given investors for 70 years.
You can expect your home to appreciate at least 5% a year — twice that much if you’ve done your homework and have gotten to know your local real estate market. You’ll get about 7% on your muni bonds (before taxes) and 9% from your mutual funds. That means that three-quarters of your wealth probably will be appreciating at an average of 7.5%
Figuring that rate of return into each of the savings levels we talked about before, here’s how your 20-year nest egg would grow:
* If you start with $12,000 a year, increase it each year by $3,000, and get a 7.5% return on 75% of your investments: You’d have  about $1.5 million.
* If you start with $12,000, increase it by $6,000 a year, and get a 7.5% return on 75% of your investments: You’d have about $2.5 million.
* If you start with $12,000 and increase it by $12,000 a year with a 7.5% return on 75% of your investments: You’d have between $8 million and $10 million.
What that means is that 75% of your savings will give you a 20-year net worth that will be higher than what you would have had if you had simply hidden your money away — and yet your risk would have been just as low. (Remember, hidden money can be stolen.)
What you do with the other 25% of your savings (the subject of another message) can make the difference between being financially comfortable, enviably wealthy, and disgustingly rich.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…
And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 
The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 
Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the Internet, and that will never change.
 
This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

10 Silly and Dangerous Things People Say About Stocks


“Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.” – Rousseau (Émile, 1762)
Peter Lynch was the most successful fund manager in the world from 1977 to 1990, when he ran the Fidelity Magellan Fund. The fund grew from $20 million to $14 billion in assets under his leadership, and he walked out on top. Just before he retired, he wrote a best-selling book titled “One Up on Wall Street: How to Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market.”
And he has probably bought and sold more stocks than anyone else on the planet. I can’t think of anyone more qualified to make a list of the 10 silliest (and most dangerous) things people say to justify their bad stock-market decisions.
So, without further ado, here’s a quick look at Peter’s list — along with my comments on each one:
1. “If it’s gone down this much already, it can’t go much lower.”
I know that you’ve said this to yourself during the last two major downturns. You said it on Lucent. On Cisco. Sun. AOL. Enron. WorldCom, etc. How many times does an investor have to say this before he learns that it makes no sense? Outside of zero, there is no rule for how low a stock can go. The best advice I can give here: If you catch yourself saying this, it’s time to get out.
2. “You can always tell when a stock’s hit bottom.”
Nobody knows when a stock will bottom — so don’t try to guess it. Instead of trying to catch a falling knife, it’s much safer to let the knife hit the ground … and let it wiggle around a bit to be sure … and then pick it up.
3. “If it’s gone this high already, how can it possibly go higher?”
If you want to make 10 times your money, you can’t sell before the stock goes up 10 times. But nearly all investors do sell the big winners early because of this faulty logic. The only way to make real money in stocks is by letting them go higher — by not taking a profit early. It’s hard to do. But you’ve got to let your profits ride.
4. “It’s only $3 a share; what can I lose?”
What can you lose? You can lose 100%. Whether a stock is $3 or $50, if it falls to zero, it’s a 100% loss. If it falls to 50 cents, it’s not much better. Three bucks is no guarantee of a bargain. Resist the urge; it’s dangerous. You can still lose it all.
5. “Eventually, they always come back.”
I’m heard that a lot during the dotcom bust. It’s as if WorldCom, Enron, Global Crossing, and all the dot-coms were some kind of fluke. Fact is, they don’t always come back. If you catch yourself saying this about one of your stocks, it may well be time to get rid of it. Make sure you’re using your trailing-stop-loss strategy here. 
6. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
For the past several years, gold has done nothing but fall in price. But every year, somebody is saying “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” As Peter Lynch says, “Sometimes it’s darkest before the dawn, but then again, other times it’s always darkest before it’s pitch-black.” If you’re saying this — and you really believe it — please be absolutely certain that you’re not just rationalizing a bad decision.
7. “When it rebounds, I’ll sell.”
I’ve heard this phrase hundreds of times. Yet, I’ve never seen anyone follow his own advice here. When the stock rebounds, they decide there’s nothing wrong with it and they keep it. If it never rebounds, they keep it. The reason people do this is that they don’t like to admit they’re wrong. So, somehow, by holding a losing stock instead of selling it, there’s still a chance that they’ll be right on this loser. Usually, they’re not. If you find yourself in this boat, your best bet is most likely to sell immediately.
8. “What, me worry? Conservative stocks don’t fluctuate much.”
There isn’t a stock on the planet that you can afford to ignore. And as we’ve learned during the stock-market shellacking of 2008-09, even blue chips can get clobbered. This phrase justifies the decision to not pay attention to your investments. That’s a bad idea. It’s your money. It’s worth a little attention.
9. “It’s taking too long for anything to ever happen.”
I hear this phrase all the time. Investors want action. But think about this: A 12% annual return is about 1% a month. That’s a great return, but there’s no action. You don’t need action. Be patient. Lynch says it takes remarkable patience to hold on to a stock that everyone else seems to ignore. Most of the money he makes on a stock, he says, is in the third or fourth year of owning it.
10. “Look at all the money I lost because I didn’t buy it!”
Lynch says this thinking “leads people to try to play catch-up by buying stocks they shouldn’t buy, if only to protect themselves from ‘losing’ more than they’ve already ‘lost.’ This usually results in real losses.” Have you made any of these statements — or statements like these — in the past year?
Always remember: In the long run, it is much easier — and ultimately less painful — to correct a bad decision quickly than it is to continue searching for emotional justification as your portfolio continues to shrink.

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…
And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 
The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 
Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the Internet, and that will never change.
 
This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…


Sunday, November 1, 2015

The 3 Secrets of Self-Made Billionaire Investors



Warren Buffett was born in 1930 and became a child of the Great Depression. Today he’s worth in excess of $50 billion.
George Soros was born the same year, and became a child of the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and WWII. According to Forbes.com, he’s worth over $19 billion.
Carl Icahn was born in 1936. He was once so broke, he had to sell his car to feed himself. Forbes.com says he’s worth around $20 billion today.
All started with nothing. All wound up billionaires. All did it by investing.
At first glance, they don’t seem to have much in common… Buffett buys stocks and whole companies and says his favorite holding period for investments is “forever.” Soros became a billionaire by making huge leveraged trades in stocks and currencies. Icahn buys controlling stakes in public companies and badgers management to sell assets, buy back shares, and do anything it can to realize hidden value.
But they do have some traits in common, a few core investing ideas that helped make them billionaires. Like every great secret of life, this one is hiding in plain sight. These three self-made billionaire investors…
1. Don’t diversify
2. Avoid risk
3. Don’t care what anyone else thinks
No. 1: DON’T DIVERSIFY. CONCENTRATE.
Consider what is likely your greatest source of wealth generation: your career. You probably haven’t diversified at all in your career. Even if you tried many different careers, you were never doing several of them at once. And, even if you do more than one job, it’s highly likely you spend the great majority of your time at just one of them and that just one provides the great majority of your income.
Why should investing be any different?
For many years, Buffett had most of Berkshire Hathaway’s money in just four stocks: American Express, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, and Gillette. Today, most of Berkshire Hathaway’s money is still in just four stocks: Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola, IBM, and American Express.
No. 2: AVOID RISK
When Carl Icahn bought Tappan shares, he was paying around $7.50 each. But he knew by looking at the balance sheet that the company was clearly worth $20 per share if it were broken up. That’s a 62% discount to fair value, a very safe bet.
After Tappan, Icahn targeted a real estate investment trust called Baird and Warner. At the time he found it, the stock was trading for $7.89 a share. Its book value was $14 a share. That’s a 44% discount to book value, and a generous margin of safety.
Soros manages risk differently than Icahn and Buffett. He says the first thing he’s looking to do is survive, and he’s known to beat a hasty retreat when he’s wrong. He keeps loss potential in mind before trading. When he shorted $10 billion of British pounds in 1992, he first calculated that his worst-case loss scenario was about 4%.
No. 3: THINK FOR THEMSELVES
Wall Street wouldn’t buy shares of The Washington Post when Buffett started buying it in February 1973. That’s true, even though most Wall Street analysts acknowledged that this was a $400 million company selling for $80 million. They were too scared because the overall market had been falling for some time.
Soros talks to lots of people to get a feel for where a market is going. But he never talks about what he’s buying or selling. He just does it.
Carl Icahn doesn’t need Wall Street, because he has his own research team. Icahn’s people comb through thousands of listed companies to find the ones that are right for his corporate-raider style. Icahn has to have his own research team. If he bought research from Wall Street, the whole world would figure out what he was doing, and it would become difficult to buy shares cheaply.
Think for yourself, avoid risk, and don’t attempt to diversify into a bunch of investments you don’t understand.
If you really want to get rich in stocks, those three rules are your foundation.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…
And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 
The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 
Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 
This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…
 

Sunday, October 18, 2015

The Best AND Worst Investing Advice


Would you like to earn an 18% yield on one of the world’s safest investments?
It’s something anyone can do.
You simply need to learn one of the great investment secrets in the world.
Here it is…
When it comes to investing, boring is big money.
Boring causes “investment magic” to happen.
Boring can provide you with financial freedom.
For example, let’s study one of the greatest investment stories of all time: Procter & Gamble (P&G)…
Most every house in America has at least one P&G product somewhere in a medicine cabinet, pantry, or storage closet. P&G is one of the world’s top consumer-products businesses. Every year, it sells billions of dollars’ worth of everyday products like Gillette razors, Pampers diapers, Charmin toilet paper, Crest toothpaste, Bounty paper towels, and Tide laundry detergent.
Razors… diapers… toilet paper… toothpaste… paper towels… laundry detergent.
You could hardly think up a more boring product lineup. It’s nothing that will interest the average investor.
But great investors see something unusual in it. They see something that others do not. They are able to see a wealth-producing “golden thread” running through P&G’s products.
Not many people can see this golden thread. That’s why most individual investors have zero interest in owning such a boring business.
But it’s a source of tremendous power. It’s one of the great secrets of successful long-term investing.
And it’s why seasoned, sophisticated investors have HUGE interest in owning them. For many elite investors, it’s ALL they want to own.
They know when it comes to investing, boring is big money.
You see, in 2014, Procter & Gamble shareholders received a cash dividend of $2.52 for every share owned.
Procter & Gamble’s dividend in 2014 was 7% more than the dividend paid in 2013. The dividend paid in 2013 was more than the dividend paid in 2012… which was larger than the dividend paid in 2011… which was larger than the dividend paid in 2010.
The dividend increases were no surprise to longtime owners of Procter & Gamble. It was simply business as usual. P&G has increased its dividend paid to shareholders every year for more than 50 years. To P&G investors, larger cash payments are a fact of life.
Because P&G has increased its dividend every year for more than 50 years, a kind of investment magic has happened. P&G is rewarding longtime shareholders with incredible amounts of cash.
An investor who bought P&G in 1994 at around $14.25 (split-adjusted) began earning a 2.3% dividend yield on his investment. Since P&G’s annual dividend has increased every year and shares have split a couple times along the way, that same investor is now earning an astounding 18% on his original investment.
Remember, P&G’s dividend yield rises every year. It’s one of the safest, most reliable income streams on the planet. Earning an 18% yield on P&G is incredible when you consider that many investors take huge risks in the pursuit of 5% dividends. They buy businesses with dangerous debt levels. They buy dangerous commodity investments that can plunge with the price of a commodity like crude oil.
But not longtime P&G owners. They’re earning huge dividend yields that rise every year, paid by one of the world’s strongest, safest companies. That’s investment magic.
If you’re new to investing, you’re probably groaning right now. You’re likely drawn to stocks with huge growth potential. You’re drawn to the hot companies featured on magazine covers and financial television. You’re always looking for the opportunity to double your money in months. You spend your time trying to find “the next Facebook” or the “next Apple.”
P&G isn’t going to increase its revenues 50% with some great new invention… so you probably have no interest in it.
This is the amateur mindset. It’s the gambler’s mindset. And if you have it, don’t worry. You’re not alone. You’re only human. Starting out, it’s perfectly normal to think this way. But as I’m confident you’ll eventually learn, it’s a reliable way to lose all your money in the stock market.
You can buy all kinds of businesses in the stock market. You can buy bank stocks… gold-mining stocks… retail stocks… biotechnology stocks… semiconductor stocks… and software stocks.
When it comes to choosing which investments to make, people naturally gravitate to companies with exciting stories. They gravitate to companies “poised on a breakthrough” or “set for 50% annual growth.” After all, the potential upside with these firms is huge.
But what people fail to realize is that buying these kinds of stocks is playing a low-probability game. For every mega-hit social-media website like Facebook, 1,000 other Internet businesses failed. For every Starbucks, 1,000 other restaurant franchises flopped. Sure, the one company you buy might beat the odds, but it’s unlikely. The odds greatly favor you losing money.
On the subject of odds…
What do think the chances are that people will continue to buy trusted brands like Tide detergent, Pampers diapers, and Crest toothpaste? What are the chances P&G increases its dividend next year just like it has done for more than 50 consecutive years?
Very high. Nearly guaranteed.
Those are the kinds of odds great investors look for. You can find them in boring businesses like P&G. You can find them in dominant companies that sell candy, like Hershey. You can find them in dominant companies that sell soda, like Coke. You can find them in self-storage businesses (people will always need places to store their stuff).
None of these businesses are particularly exciting. They just enjoy the most consistent and reliable cash flows in the world. Great investors looking to make long-term capital commitments are drawn to them because of it.
Although this idea immediately makes sense to most folks, few people actually apply it to their investing when they’re getting started. Most folks can only come around to this idea after suffering painful losses in “exciting” investments. Your parents can tell you not to touch a hot stove, but you probably won’t learn not to touch a hot stove unless you actually touch it yourself.
Something to keep in mind: An investment’s excitement level is usually an inverse of its likelihood of success.
Nowadays, I’m much more likely to be interested in a candy or beer company that pays reliable dividends than I am in a small biotech company. I’m more interested in the boring, reliable, tax-free income paid by municipal bonds than I am in a small semiconductor stock.
I’m more interested in steady income streams deposited into my accounts than the excitement of gambling on the “next Facebook.”
I don’t know what the next popular website will be. I don’t know who is going to make the next popular tech gadget. But I am confident that no technology will render having a beer after work obsolete. That’s the kind of confidence we want in our long-term investments.
Like most any great money lesson, we see this at work by studying investment legend Warren Buffett.
Over the course of his 40-plus-year investment career, Buffett has, for the most part, shunned high-tech investments. He has consistently focused on boring consumer franchises. He has made large investments in Procter & Gamble, candy maker See’s Candies, beverage maker Coca-Cola, gum maker Wrigley, and retail giant Wal-Mart.
Buffett buys these types of businesses because new technologies are much less likely to disrupt their industries. They are likely to retain their competitive advantages. A decade ago, Coke was the dominant soda company. It will probably be the dominant soda company 10 years from now. It’s much harder to say those things about Internet sites or high-tech businesses.
Also, remember the wisdom of George Soros, who has made billions of dollars in the market. Soros says, “If investing is entertaining, if you’re having fun, you’re probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.”
I’m not saying you can’t make money in exciting stocks like biotech, high tech, and gold mines. You’re just unlikely to pull it off. If you want that kind of “spice” in your investment life, consider investing like a wealthy friend of mine. My friend is a conservative investor. He keeps the bulk of his portfolio in safe investments. But over the years, he has boosted his overall returns by placing tiny amounts of money in small, speculative, “exciting” investments. Several have been huge winners.
The key is to keep the bulk of your portfolio (at least 90%) in safe, boring investments that throw off dividends and interest. Invest tiny amounts of money in more speculative, “exciting” stocks.
But if you’re interested in long-term investment success, train yourself to be interested in things like diapers, mouthwash, self-storage, chocolate, beer, soda, municipal sewer services, and food. These everyday things enjoy constant demand… and the businesses that provide them enjoy consistent sales and profits.
None of this is exciting. It just works. And boring means big money.
If you’d like to improve your investment returns, I encourage you to think about the ideas in this essay.
Good investing!$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…
And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 
The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 
Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 
This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…