Background info - Over the summer I have started to dabble in the stock market and investing. I opened an online traders account at TD Ameritrade and put in 1680$ so far. I intend to use this blog to keep track of my investments over the next several years.
I read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing. The sovereign debt and euro crisis has ripped the market wide open for opportunities in Spain. My portfolio looks like the following...
NRG Energy (NRG) - An american based company in Texas that I invested in in June 2012 that is involved in wholesale electric utilities recently announced a merger with one of its rivals, GenOn to create the largest wholesale electricity business in the USA. I am currently up about 25% and dont plan on selling until 2014 when their project Agua Caliente finishes. Agua Caliente is involved around the rising popularity of electric cars and offers an alternative to fueling then over long distances with electric stations similar ga stations but electric.
Banco Santander A.D. (SAN) - Santander is a spanish based bank that is one of the largest in the world in terms of market capitalization. They offer a 13% annual dividend yield. Since only about half their business is in Spain, they will be fine because they are a global operation branching out into latin america and the UK. The euro crisis has caused their stock to plummet more then what I think they are worth. I plan on holding onto it for several years as well.
Telefonica A.D. (TEF) - A monster sized telecommunications company that is also based in Spain. They offer a 12% dividend yield but have canceled their dividend for the year in order to cut their scary 70billion euro debt. Although I am not hapy with this decision, I cant blame them because their credit rating is on the verge of trash. Telefonica has been expanding its operations and is in a similar position as Banco Santander in terms of where they do business. When their credit rating turns to trash level their interest will become stupid high and they wont be able to keep expanding so I believe that was a good management decision to cut dividends.
Alcatel & Lucent (ALU) - They are a construction company that builds communication infrastructure. Thry are responsible for the construction of companies such as verizons fios and 4g LTE and AT & Ts 4g network in the usa. They are a global operation base in France and have had to cut their workforce by 10% in an effort to save money due to the recession stunting growth. This company is super undervalued because people think they are going bankrupt which is quite the contrary. Unfortunately I only had 40$ to invest in them and so it is more of a learning expetience than a profitable stock.
Currently the ECB hasnt committed to an aggressive policy of saving the euro yet so it still teeters on the brink of destruction. It will be at least another year before I see any sizeable results in my stocks besides NRG.
Now, onto the starcraft related stuff! I found an article that I had written about TvZ and gives a better understanding of the matchup. I dont consider it a guide because it does not address an overall theme, but several issues such as taking being able to secure a third base. It also comes with several vods with notes annotated into the vods themselves to provide some better insight into my decision making process.
General TvZ Info – TvZ is the most diverse and most unique matchup in sc2. There are an infinite amount of unit combinations and build variations that can be applied to this matchup. Because of the uniqueness of this matchup to the other terran matchups, TvT and TvP, TvZ must be approached differently and treated differently as well. The two game deciding factors that dictate the flow of the game are timings and scouting.
Now although timings apply to both sides of the matchup, the difficulty of this matchup for terran comes from the fact that the zerg players dictate these timing standards and windows. As a result, many terran players often cringe at the thought of TvZ because they are not aware of these timings or ARE aware, but cannot use these timings to their advantage. What do I mean by using these timings to their advantage? Well, like I said a zerg player dictates the timings of this matchup. A terran player must know how to react vs. the hive tech timing window, against the cheesey timing window (7:30-9 minutes), and against the mutalisk/infestor timing windows. These are all very general, but give references to different phases of the game that zergs indeed do control. Although they control these standard timings, this allows us terrans to abuse the predictability of these timings with the infinite diversity that is terran. Against every zerg timing, the terran player has the advantage to catch the zerg player off guard with a custom-made counter timing to the standard timing of the zerg player. Timing attacks should NOT be based on when upgrades finish, how many units you have, or how much damage you have just done to the zerg.A pressure attack involves a timing where lets say something like stim finishes and you attack with a maurader, a bunch of marines, medivaks, or hellions or you are waiting until blue flame and stim finish and you attack with mauraders and hellions and medivacs. See, the unit combinations are endless for terran because of their diversity, but all these timings will hit at around the same time, usually around the 9:30-10:30 mark which is right before the third base of a zerg kick’s in if it is a fast third, or right before their tech kicks in whether it be the 1030 muta timing or infestors. The second factor that involves being able to win in TvZ is scouting. The more information you know, the better you can prepare for the zerg timing windows where they are the strongest such as scanning to see a hive morphing. This lets you have a heads up of what the zerg is committed to for the next several minutes and lets you be able to add starports and start Viking production to be able to increase your advantage against the zerg timing.
Macro game 3 base Terran Play – How to get up to those 3 basesThere are two main styles which you can obtain a third base.
Pressure – involves a mid game timing push around the 10-10:30 mark
Pros – more units which can be used to scout army compositions and third base and stall creep spread, main and natural mine out faster, prevents opponent from being greedy. Cons – slower upgrades, slower third base, if not enough damage is done, it might be difficult to take a fourth base
Defense - involves taking a fast third command center from 5:30 – 6:30
Pros – faster upgrades, faster third base, main and natural base mine out slower, stronger mid-late game production boost, allows for a faster fourth base (12:30 vs 15 minutes for normal 4th) Cons – less scouting information, put into a reactive stance so that you need to find other ways to keep your opponent in check with mid-late game pressure and timings.
The 3OC build as I refer to it is where you build a fast third command center in your base at around 5:45 before you start building up your army. This is a very gimmicky build though because it can be hard countered by many cheeses like the 10roach rush or a roach/baneling bust. By making a small adjustment in your decision making of this build and making a small scouting adjustment to whether you use this or you take a fast third command center later at around 8:30 and instead build up your army first.
Scouting with scv early game– it’s important to send your scv out at the 2 minute mark on 4 player maps so you can get a scout in even if you find the zerg in the last position. On 2 player maps, where the location is already known, the scv can be delayed until 3 minutes on 2 player maps. When the scv gets to the zergs base there are 2 things you will see. .Fast gas (3:00 – 4:00)(Pressure play) Slow gas (4:00 + )(Defensive play) Fast gas – possible cheese is an option so doing 3OC is a huge risk. In this case, just add production buildings and after you can confirm that there is no cheese, you can start a third in your base before you pressure with your units at around 8:30-9 minutes.
Vod example #2 -
Slow gas – just the fact that the gas is past 4 minutes means that speed is going to be really slow. Of course, zerg can still do a later kind of cheese, but since speed is slow there is no immediate danger of speedlings so you can make a 3OC before you make 2 hellions from reactor hellion.
Scouting with Hellions in the early game– Poke his natural to see unit composition, if he made a crawler, how many queens he has, how aggressively he is spreading creep, and poke his third base around the 6-7 minute mark because that’s the timing when zergs will take a fast third. At the very least, the hellions should also exert control over the watch tower whenever they aren’t being used.
In the terran late game, you have to be wary of the two major tech switches in TvZ which are broodlords and ultralisks. Both of these can be tricky to scout and can often end the game if you didn’t get a fast enough heads up to prepare.
Broodlords – they are the zerg deathball, but are super slow and in that matter, immobile. The army composition you want vs broodlords/corruptors/infestors depends on how many of which they get. If they lean towards heavy broodlords, Vikings will end up killing them. If they have broodlords/corruptors, you need a couple thors in your army to deal with the corruptors because they bunch up a lot and a modest Viking size, around 1.5:1 ratio of Viking:Corruptor
Ultralisks – need heavy siege tank count and +2 and +3 weapons for siege tanks should be researching as fast as possible along with other upgrades. You can either have like 12+ siege tanks with a pure marine composition or mix in 2-3 tech labs worth of mauraders with a smaller siege tank number count. Siege tanks are useful vs both broodlords and ultralisks but mauraders are only good against ultralisks.
Vod example #2 is a good example of me trying to find what the zerg’s tech is and countering Broodlord tech in the late game.
Well thx for reading! Will post again in a month or three
New to the world of investing...in fact I haven't even dabbled in it.
Graduating in a month and will be obtaining a job soon. With the cash coming in, I am thinking of investing.
Any tips on acquiring useful investing information? How do you know a company's current worth and its future value if you aren't upper-management and deal with a businesses' daily intricacies?
New to the world of investing...in fact I haven't even dabbled in it.
Graduating in a month and will be obtaining a job soon. With the cash coming in, I am thinking of investing.
Any tips on acquiring useful investing information? How do you know a company's current worth and its future value if you aren't upper-management and deal with a businesses' daily intricacies?
Any help would be much obliged.
Thanks.
I tend to say that there is no worse way of losing money than to invest into something you don't know a shit about. Somewhere the money all those stockbroker make has to come from. And this is partly from people who think they "are going to try investing"... But maybe I'm wrong
The concept of value investing is suitable for people with lots of money cause you have to hold your stocks for a long time, and if there's so few money invested, I think that you'd be better off going for short to mid-term investments.
Frankly, I didn't say riskier investments cause I think you went for the risky ones yourself by picking spanish companies and one that people believe will go bankrupt.
The whole thing is still largely a gamble. Even professionals have different strategies, the more empirical ones being technical chart analysis. Hell, there are traders who consult astrologists. There are many different strategies.
I simply picked an Index for myself (DAX) and started trading here and there with not too big sums. Exclusively bluechips to reduce insolvency risks to a minimum. I use technical analysis for confirmation of decisions, but my choice is mostly based on observation, gut feeling and predicting the effect of news on the stocks.
I am by no means a professional, but I am learning by doing.
New to the world of investing...in fact I haven't even dabbled in it.
Graduating in a month and will be obtaining a job soon. With the cash coming in, I am thinking of investing.
Any tips on acquiring useful investing information? How do you know a company's current worth and its future value if you aren't upper-management and deal with a businesses' daily intricacies?
Any help would be much obliged.
Thanks.
I tend to say that there is no worse way of losing money than to invest into something you don't know a shit about. Somewhere the money all those stockbroker make has to come from. And this is partly from people who think they "are going to try investing"... But maybe I'm wrong
No, this is actually a very good point. I think Warren Buffett famously said that he wouldn't buy into anything he didn't understand. Don't invest yourself unless you understand what you're doing and you understand how whatever you're buying works.
Well...my goal personally is to create a secondary income as my life progresses with stocks by recieving a dividend each year. A dividend is like an award that the company gves a shareholder for holding their stock and essentially "investing" your money in them. While their stock may not increase in the next year you can be assured that you wilk recieve a dividend amount for a small % of what you invested in. Most American companies give 1-3% annual dividend yield.
So the first step to all of this is to obtain information to see what te companies financial statement is like. For example if I wanted to find NRGs financial statement I would type in "NRG Annual Report 2011/2012" into google. Companies are required to post these things and make them available to the public if they become a public company. Bascally they make their financial data available to the public so that people can determine whether to invest in them or not.
So as an investor, I want to make sure that the company I invest in has strong financial statement. A good looking report would include generally a small amount of debt (less then 50% of total assets), increasing growth, good cash flow, and what the company has been spending money in (reduing debt, buying smaller businesses, paying out dividends, etc). A fear that people have is that they never have enough information about the company vs. the "Insiders" or the upper management that makes decisions about where profits are allocated and plans for future growth and essentially running the company.
However rest assured, if you have ever seen an annual report, then you will know that it shows EVERYTHING. If a company has a decent amount of cash flow and a small debt, they will most likely look to be expanding their business. You can then expect that they will be buying up businesses the next year that are essential to growth. Or if a company has had a bad quarter or hell, even a bad year, you can see what their previous years looked like to see how well they operated when there wasnt a recession and whether now they are losing money from bad management or simply going through tough times.
Basically as an investor, you want the company you invest in to report steady growth, have strong financials (look at annual report and read through THE WHOLE THING), and a not retarded management. You want the company to be a good company that will make use of your money and pay you back. By putting money into a company you believe in a company to be successul in the future and pretty much loaning your money out to them.
Now I thought a lot about what Warren Buffet said about not investing in what you dont know and I will give an example of his reasoning. Lets take a look at Zynga. Zynga was this hot shot company that created farmville. Very popular game = fast growth which makes Zynga a growth stock (google if you dont know what it is). Howeer just recently they have taken a huge loss as their other games havent been as popular.
Looking closer at the situation, I have had personal experience with this companies products I played farmville for a brief period and I know how those kinds of games work and how Zynga makes money (advertisements and buying virtual products). All of their games after farmville have essentially been the same type of game but with a different theme. Its like if blizzard made sc2, then made d3 be almost exactly like sc2, then creating wc3 to be exactly like sc2. Shit gets boring and doesnt get fun without change and new ideas. Based on that, chances are their future games arent gonna do too well unless thy seriously start changing the way that they make money. As a growth stock, Zynga needs to, is required to, report huge earnings like a 10% growth every quarter. If they report 10% quarter 1, 8% quarter 2, 7% quarter 3, and 4% quarter 4 then even though they are still growing they are decreasing in growth every year so essentially they are not making as much profits compared to the past quarters and eventually they start losing money (granted they didnt innovate with the money they did make because tey are still making money).
Now Warren Buffet doesnt have facebook. He has no clue how Zynga makes their money and ha never played any of their games. So if he has never een had exposure to it, why would he invest his money into a company that he doesnt know about? Thats almost as good as going to vegas and hoping to make money at the roulettes. Its a completely blind guess as to whether this company will be profitable for him or not.
Now, lets look at facebook. Their IPO was earlier this year. One of the most anticipated IPOs and hyped up to be the next google. Basically everyone was saying it waa going to be a HUGE IPO and therefore would make you a lot of money just like google did. However, as we all know facebook "failed" rather miserably compare to pre forecasts. I use "failure" instead of failure because they really did not fail. The goal of Mark Zuckerberg through the IPO was to get as big as a market cap as possible. In this case he got a fuckton of money. Over 20billion I would consider a huge success already. From a business standpoint the market cap is like a loan to the company to use that money to make even more money with it by aquiring other businesses and sources of revenue. From an investors standpoint, you are waiting for the company to utilize theur market cap to make more money that ultimately benefits you. I would consider facebook a huge huge success from a business standpoint rather than an investors point of view but it was misinterpreted that facebook would basically be the next get rich quick thing.
I guess the most important things about investing is 1) Do not make decisions based off of an emotions such as gut feelings, or based off of speculation of the news. 2) Do your research and know a company inside out before you invest in it. Annual reports are not easy to read through. Many of them can be longer than 150+ pages simply because a company is just really big and has a lot of operations to be accounted for.
Also knowing the market of the product and market penrtration helps to see the fulll potential of how big a business can become and where they need to expand to get the most growth.
The problem about that reasoning is that it assumes that the majority of other market members acts rationally (and that a stock's value will always end up at a rationally determinable value), and that it describes long-term situations.
It also doesn't take into account that a lot of stock market movements are automated nowadays. I believe (not knowing for sure) that these automatisms lead to the potentiation of a stock market trend, making rallies and crashes more likely and faster to happen.
It's a strategy that suits your needs (having an additional, regular income through dividends), and is ideal for this purpose, but imo there are better strategies that end up making more money at the same risk in less amount of time.
A good strategy should involve a combination of different methods, cause as good as Buffetts method was, since he's been investing for decades, starting in a time where the 'real' economy wasn't disconnected from the highly monetarized economy we see today, it's still a method that is good, but not optimal for the situation we live in today.
Annual reports don't always affect related stocks.By looking at stock market movements, you will quickly notice how irrational certain developments are. Values falling after a good report and viceversa is probably the most notorious example. Or annual reports having less impact on a value than mainstream news. I am speaking of the short term obviously, but a long term isn't less risky. It is in fact vulnerable to economical and political shifts, things that are sometimes less predictable than a technical chart analysis (think of 9/11, or the millennium bug and how they affected the economy).
After all, our decisions are also a matter of taste. So I think you picked a good strat, but don't close your eyes for alternatives, maybe you can come up with own strategies.
On August 04 2012 00:05 Vivax wrote: The problem about that reasoning is that it assumes that the majority of other market members acts rationally (and that a stock's value will always end up at a rationally determinable value), and that it describes long-term situations.
It also doesn't take into account that a lot of stock market movements are automated nowadays. I believe (not knowing for sure) that these automatisms lead to the potentiation of a stock market trend, making rallies and crashes more likely and faster to happen.
It's a strategy that suits your needs (having an additional, regular income through dividends), and is ideal for this purpose, but imo there are better strategies that end up making more money at the same risk in less amount of time.
A good strategy should involve a combination of different methods, cause as good as Buffetts method was, since he's been investing for decades, starting in a time where the 'real' economy wasn't disconnected from the highly monetarized economy we see today, it's still a method that is good, but not optimal for the situation we live in today.
Annual reports don't always affect related stocks.By looking at stock market movements, you will quickly notice how irrational certain developments are. Values falling after a good report and viceversa is probably the most notorious example. Or annual reports having less impact on a value than mainstream news. I am speaking of the short term obviously, but a long term isn't less risky. It is in fact vulnerable to economical and political shifts, things that are sometimes less predictable than a technical chart analysis (think of 9/11, or the millennium bug and how they affected the economy).
After all, our decisions are also a matter of taste. So I think you picked a good strat, but don't close your eyes for alternatives, maybe you can come up with own strategies.
I believe about 70% of trading is automated. I completely agree with you though. There are a lot of other strategies that work and there isnt one right way of doing stuff. I plan on becoming a surgeon and going to medical school after college though so I dont plan on spending significant amounts of time investing and maximizing profit. As long as Im makin more then if I jist left the money in the bank accumulating interest then Im contnt with my results.
I just use annual reports to determine if a stock is, in my opinion, undervalued in general and if its a good time to buy or not. Im still working on the best timr tobuy something. I always try to buy a stock at its lowest price possible. My thinking is that evenwhen events such as the recession that happened in 2008 is only a temporary drop in a stock( temporary ven if it lasts more then a couple years) and that once the event passes and things stabilise, the stock will go back up to pre-recession levels. Thats what I think at least and is my reasoning for investing in spanish companies and I also make sure that these companies wont br going under anyime soon and are in fact large enough to weather the storm.
I just dont want to overextend myself and Im sure my strategy will develop and change as I gain more knowledge. I dont usually say anything about my age, but I am only 18. Overall I am happy enough to just have a semi viable strategy to start off with and whatever knowledge I can gain now will undoubtly be helpful in the future of lets say 20 years.
EPT
