Simple Categories to help define my process
As I have written articles for this blog, my personal investment criteria have evolved and changed. I have discovered the types of companies that interest me as investments and subjects to write about. I do not manage money for anyone and want my personal stock accounts to reflect my philosophy and views. Through the research I have done here, I have found there are a few areas that I prefer to focus on. Here they are:
- Income stocks: I am very interested in stocks that pay large dividends. I like getting the cash to put back to work. Short term stock prices reflect a lot of fears about a company that may affect the stock price, but the dividend can still provide a balance to the return.
- Small cap stocks. For me, this is companies with a market capitalization of less than about $2 billion. Small caps have more room for multiples of the initial investment returns. They are also less analyzed, and often inaccurately, by the Wall Street analysts.
- International and emerging markets. The U.S. is a very competitive place, and if a company has a really good, really profitable idea, competition will soon follow. In many other countries a good company with a good business can stay that way for years with little or no competition.
That about covers the types of companies I am looking for. I then try to find those that have something that sets them apart and will allow continued and growing profitability. It is a fairly simple idea, but I put a lot of work into digging into whatever I can find about a stock that catches my eye.
Back to the title of this post, I have simplified my category list to more closely align with the bullets listed above. The 20 Stock Articles page on this site give a listing of selected posts by their categories. I believe it is a good way to get an overview about what is going on here.
Different Theme
For those of you who have visited here before, you will notice the look and layout (theme) of the blog has been changed. Any feedback in the comments on the new look would be appreciated. Thanks.
New Page: 20 Stock Portfolio Articles
As part of my ongoing effort to make this blog more interesting and informative I have added a new page: 20 Stock Articles. This page is a listing of posts by category so readers can more easily find previous posts on this topic.
The 20 Stock Portfolio page will continue to have the little Yahoo stock price and chart.
The 20 Stock Articles will have most of this blogs articles listed by category. (I may have to rethink some of my categories).
For any with their own Wordpress blog the articles plugin is by Alex King.
Blog Feature Note
If you have been here before, you saw the nifty stock quotes next to the stock symbols. I did this with a plug in called Embedded Stock Quote. Well it appears to have gone Tango Uniform. I think Yahoo finance has changed something with their new front page look so I will attempt to hack the plug in and get my nifty quotes back. So if the stock symbols look weird you no know why.
Update: The plugin developer has acknowledged the problem and should get the code fixed soon.
Update part II: Plugin fixed. Hooray!
New Look
If you are one of the few who visited this blog before, during its first week, and are now returning you will see that I have changed the look.
I really liked the previous theme called Blue Laptop from Performancing.com. This theme called Modern Paper is also from them. The first theme looked good but did not have much flexibility. This one is more flexible and has more real estate for additions. I have plans for the growth of this blog and this theme will make it easier to put them into effect.
Why am I doing this?
About 10 months ago I opened a new IRA account to start trading with some covered call ideas I had. Prior to that the majority of my investing had been in mutual funds. At the same time I started a blog at wordpress.com called Learning Covered Calls.
I have been an avid reader of investing and markets for years. In the early 90’s I spent several years as a registered rep (investment salesman) in the branches of a large bank.
While doing research for trade possibilities for my covered call positions I have run across a lot of investment ideas that did not directly relate to covered call writing so I had the idea of starting a blog with a more open criteria list concerning investments to write about.
I also wanted to start a blog separate from the free blog opportunities so I could have more control over blog design and content. Hopefully, I will be posting on my experiences while trying to make this blog work the way I want to.
Finally, on investing, back before the investment world was parsed up into tens of thousands of styles, mutual funds, etf’s, etc. there were growth, value, technical, and special situations. (At least that is how I remember it!) I am not a chart guy, but will be looking for ideas in the other category that you may not have heard of or thought about.
-
Amazon gift card link
Subscriptions
RSS
