Tag: stocks

How Do You Invest a Big Inheritance?

by smallivy, posted in Investing, Investment Strategies

OK, so let’s say old Aunt Lizzie has died (the aunt who you don’t remember seeing since you were five, and just remember that she had a lot of cats) and she has left you $100,000.  You aren’t sure why she left you the money, but now you have a bunch of cash and want to try your hand at investing.

Let’s assume further that you already have an emergency fund (cash) of 3-6 months worth of expenses, a retirement account set up that is full of mutual funds and the like, you don’t have credit card debt, you have the house on a fixed 30 year or — even better –15 year loan, and you have the kid’s college account set up and ready to go.  If any of these are not the case, take care of these first – you aren’t ready to start investing in stocks.

So the question is, how do you invest all of this money, starting from a such a large sum?

Find a Great Read for the Summer – Click Here

Well, given the recent run-up, you might not think the market is particularly attractive right now, and probably will be heading down for a while.  You could be wrong, however, and all of that federal funds money may finally start the lending flowing and we could see 20,000 on the Dow in a year.  What the market will do over the next few years will also not matter a whole lot in 10-20 years.  There is therefore no reason to wait, but there also is no reason to jump in with both feet.
First of all I would determine how much of the $100k I was wanting to preserve and not put substantially at risk, and how much I was wanting to grow more rapidly with a bit off added risk.  Personally, I might decide that I wanted to preserve $40,000-$50,000 of it through diversification.   (Others who are more risk averse might want to put $70,000-$80,000 in mutual funds.  If you really don’t want to mess around with individual stocks, you would be just fine putting it all into mutual funds.)  This I would put in 2-3 index funds.  Here one might see declines of 20-30% on some years, but this will be rare, and with time this money should grow at an average rate of about 10-15% per year, doubling each 5-7 years.  Here I would put some in now, wait a few months, and put in more, taking about 6 months to a year to become fully invested.

With the rest I’m looking to take a bit more risk for the chance at larger returns through investing in individual stocks.  I know that any one stock could collapse, but it could also grow by thousands of percent.  By buying a few carefully picked stocks I’m hoping to get at least one that grows for years and beats the overall market.

Anytime a large sum is to be invested, even if the market doesn’t look so unstable as it does now, it is always wise to wade in slowly.    I would start by picking 2-3 stocks that have good long-term prospects (see the stock picking category of the blog).  Buy a few hundred shares of each of these — about equal dollar  amounts.  Then watch them for a while, hoping that they will drop a bit and you can buy more shares for a bit less.  Add to positions that do.

Find the Perfect Book to Plan Your Vacation – Click Here

Once you have the initial positions, set up, wait about three months.  Check on the positions then and see if the companies still have the fundamentals you thought they did.  If they do, invest more in the 1-2 stocks that have lagged the others – buy low.  Continue to do this, adding a few hundred shares every three months, until you have about 500-1000 shares of each.  You may have $30-$80,000 of the money invested by this time, with $10-$30k in each stock.  If this is too much for you to lose, choose six stocks instead, making each position $5-$15k.  If this is still too rich, choose 10.   If you are still too worried, individual stock investing is not for you.  Buy three or four nice ETFs or index mutual funds and sleep easy at night.

At this point, start to look for another good stock in which to invest the remaining funds if money remains.  As the positions grow, sell off some shares if any of the positions become too big for you to lose – bad things happen some times.  Put some of this money in other individual stocks or add to existing position.  Diversify the rest to preserve the capital you’ve gained.  If any of the companies lose the qualities for which you bought them, sell them off and put the money into something else.  Also, see if you can save some money from your occupation and continue to add stocks to your portfolio.

Hopefully Aunt Lizzie’s gift will lead to a large portfolio of stocks and be worth many times the original gift 20 years into the future.  If this happens, maybe take $100,000 and give it to a grandchild.  Put it in an index fund or ETF when they are twenty and you will have paid for their retirement.  Do it when they are two, and you will have created a multi-millionaire.

Have a question?  Please leave it in a comment.  Follow me on Twitter to get news about new articles and find out what I’m investing in. @SmallIvy_SI

Disclaimer: This blog is not meant to give financial planning or tax advice.  It gives general information on investment strategy, picking stocks, and generally managing money to build wealth. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell stocks or any security. Financial planning advice should be sought from a certified financial planner, which the author is not. Tax advice should be sought from a CPA.  All investments involve risk and the reader as urged to consider risks carefully and seek the advice of experts if needed before investing.

Catching a Falling Knife

by smallivy, posted in Investing, Stock Picking, Stock Pricing

Wall Street has a lot of sayings developed by traders who learned one lesson or another, usually after losing a great deal of money.  One of the bromides is to “catch a falling knife,” usually used in phrases like “He tried to catch a falling knife with that stock and lost his shirt.”

In stock market parlance, to “catch a falling knife” if to buy a stock that is declining rapidly in price with the hopes of buying the stock at the bottom, thereby getting a good price, from which the stock rebounds sharply, leading to a quick profit.  As would be the case with trying to catch a real falling knife (picture point side down, razor-sharp, rocketing towards your foot) the maneuver is tricky.  If you move too soon, you will be rewarded with a slice in your finger or a point in your palm.  If you move to slowly as the handle whizzes by, you’ll miss the knife entirely.

Buying falling stocks is a form of value investing, in which an investor buys stocks that he believes are undervalued and holds them until he believes they are fairly valued or overvalued.  The general premise is that an undervalued stock will eventually return to its fair value, and that undervalued stocks will do better than overvalued stocks.  Value investing is based on the “buy low, sell high” philosophy.  This strategy has proven itself at various points in the past, although in recent years the momentum investing approach (buy high, sell higher) has actually been more profitable.

 

        

Find Books on Investing from Amazon

The trouble with buying declining stocks is that stocks that are falling rapidly in price are usually falling for a reason.  Looking at the current British Petroleum fall, the stock is declining because the clean-up efforts from the oil spill will cost unknown billions of dollars, which in turn will hurt earnings.  There is speculation over whether the dividend will be cut or eliminated, how big the losses will be, and how much will be paid in legal costs and claims resulting from the numerous lawsuits that will no doubt come in the next year or two.  In addition, the actions that the US Government may take and their effect of future profitability are unknown at this point.  Because stock investors hate uncertainty the price will continue to fall. (Even if the news is bad, if you know the numbers you can value a stock.  If there is uncertainty no one knows how to value the stock and therefore are afraid to step in and buy).

The only time to try to catch a falling knife is when the whole market is declining, and then to pick up shares of a stock you have determined to be a good long-term buy and were accumulating anyway.  In this type of situation, good stocks and bad tend to decline, so your great company will fall along with everything else.  When the markets turn around, the great stocks are the first to shoot back up, providing once-in-a-lifetime returns.

To determine if the whole market is declining, rather than just your stock, look at the mid-term charts (maybe 6-month time span) of several stocks.  If they all look about the same, with head and shoulder patterns and then a downward trend, the whole market is falling (the current market is like this).  If only the stock you are interested in is falling, it is best to stay away because there is probably something other know that you don’t (yet).

 

Learn how to use mutual funds from the founder of Vanguard:

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you determine that the whole market is falling, the way to catch the knife is to wait for the initial decline to start to slow and flatten out and then buy about 1/3 of the number of shares you will eventually buy.  Then, wait for the rise and hope it is a bear-market, “suckers” rally.  If it is, wait for the stock to decline beyond the previous low and then wait until it begins to flatten again.  Buy the second 1/3 here.  Repeat one more time if the market cooperates and there is a third downturn.  If the stock moves up and crosses the original high (the “head” of the “head and shoulders” pattern) wait for the subsequent low and buy the rest  of the shares because the fall is probably over.

After you are all in, just sit back and wait.  The stock may fall farther, but by buying in stages you lower your cost basis and also are aided psychologically.  As the stock moved to new lows, since you were hoping it would continue to decline, you don’t get the self-doubt that you get when you buy the full position at once and see the price continue to decline.  It is almost impossible to catch the exact bottom, but this way you had three tries.  Eventually the stock should recover and set a new all-time high if you picked the right kind of stock, so whether you got the exact bottom or not won’t really matter.

Happy catching!

Join the conversation and help make this blog more exciting!  Please leave a comment.  Also, if you have an investing question, email  vtsioriginal@yahoo.com or leave the question in a comment.

Disclaimer: This blog is not meant to give financial planning advice, it gives information on a specific investment strategy and picking stocks. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell stocks or any security. Financial planning advice should be sought from a certified financial planner, which the author is not. All investments involve risk and the reader as urged to consider risks carefully and seek the advice of experts if needed before investing.

What is a Short Sale?

by smallivy, posted in Investing, Investment Strategies

The term “short sale” has come more into the popular vernacular lately in reference to the real estate transaction in which the lender allows the borrower to sell a house for less than is owed for the property.  In stocks and other securities a short sale is something entirely different.  Today I will discuss short sales as they relate to securities.

In securities, a short sale goes as follows – An investor (or speculator) calls her broker and says that she wants to sell 100 shares of company XYZ short at $50 per share.  Her broker goes out and borrows the shares (usually from someone who has a margin account who is currently on margin) and then sells the shares for $50.  The broker deposits the proceeds, less commissions, in the investor’s account.  At some later date, to close the transaction, the investor must purchase the shares, replacing those that were borrowed.  (Note that this person will probably not know that the shares were every borrowed, and if he decides to sell his shares during the period shares from another person must be found and used for the sale.)  If the company pays a dividend while the short seller still has the position open she must pay the dividend to the person from whom the shares were borrowed (who again doesn’t know they are gone).

 

Learn to master your money with these great books from Amazon:

 

If the investor who did the short sale is able to buy the shares back at a lower price, say $40 per share, she will make the difference in price ($50-$40)x100 = $1000, minus commissions and any dividends she had to pay.  If the stock rises above the price she sold them for and she closes the position, she will lose money.  Obviously, stocks are sold short when an investor thinks it will decline in price.  Because stocks naturally tend to increase in price (because of inflation if nothing else), selling short is not a long-term strategy.

Now that I’ve explained the basics, you may wonder if short selling is a good strategy for and investor.  After all, why not make money when the market is going down as well as when it is going up.  The issue is that you really don’t know very often when the market will be going down.  You can certainly tell when the market is overpriced, but that does not mean that the market won’t continue to be overpriced, or even get more overpriced, before stocks finally pull back.  Sometime earnings will also increase rapidly, making stocks fairly priced again.

Coffee Variety Sampler Pack for Keurig K-Cup Brewers, 40 Count
San Francisco Bay OneCup, Fog Chaser, 80 Single Serve Coffees
KRUPS F203 Electric Spice and Coffee Grinder with Stainless Steel Blades, 3-Ounce, Black

There are maybe two situations where short selling might be worth it.  The first is called selling short against the box.  In this strategy you sell short shares of a stock you already own, telling your broker that you want to sell short against the box.  He will then borrow and sell some shares, yet leave your original position alone, meaning that you’ll have both a long position and a short position.  When you are ready, you simply tell your broker to wash the two positions and you close both sides.  The reason for doing this is if you want to take a profit in case the stock is about to decline, but want to move the gain into a future year for taxes.

The other time is when the market is really, really overpriced and ready for a fall, or you see something coming like the 2008 housing crisis, and you want to protect your portfolio without selling everything.  In this case, you can take some short positions, effectively going neutral or near neutral on the market, as a way to protect yourself,  For example, in 2007 I was shorting mortgage companies since I figured they would decline when the housing boom ended.

 

 

Have a question?  Please leave it in a comment.  Follow me on Twitter to get news about new articles and find out what I’m investing in. @SmallIvy_SI

Disclaimer: This blog is not meant to give financial planning or tax advice.  It gives general information on investment strategy, picking stocks, and generally managing money to build wealth. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell stocks or any security. Financial planning advice should be sought from a certified financial planner, which the author is not. Tax advice should be sought from a CPA.  All investments involve risk and the reader as urged to consider risks carefully and seek the advice of experts if needed before investing.