Slow Trader

Tag: Warren Buffet

  • Is it time to worry?

    The Economist have an article this week that asks “prices are high across a range of assets. Is it time to worry?”

    Before the 2007-08 financial crash I managed to cash-in everything that would have been exposed to the crash. This, I’m sure, was luck. I was, at the time, financing a business build; fortuitously, I went much further than cashing-in assets required to support the business.

    Some lost up to 50% of their worth during the 2007-08 crash. (I learnt recently, on their son’s visit to the UK, that this had happened to someone who I had known very well and who now resides in Australia.)

    As the Economist alludes, should we be concerned now?

    I spent nearly a year in the development of fundamental formulae based on Benjamin Graham’s ideas. His method principally determined a ‘margin of safety’. As the Economist article explains: “the price paid for a stock or a bond should allow for human error, bad luck or, indeed, many things going wrong at once”.

    In my technical trading, which is the only trading I now do, ‘margin of safety’ is everything: (1) I do not carry a trade overnight and certainly not over a weekend. (2) The risk of each trade does not exceed a maximum. (3) I cannot multi task, so I trade only one thing, watch it in the moment and with awareness of what (news) might affect it.

    Not many have the will, the time or the inclination to do what I do. I understand that. So we use traditional fund managers.

    Graham’s ‘margin of safety’ was buying a share at a 50% discount or better. can we get that deal today? If not, fund managers may become increasingly incautious in their dealings.

    Buffett said this week, as reported by the Economist, “stocks would look cheap in three years’ time if interest rates were one percentage point higher, but not if they were three percentage points higher”.

    In the meantime, for my fund investors, I’m very happy to take ‘margin of safety’ into my own hands.

    P.S. My articles are few and far between currently as I work on a strategy e-book and of course my trading.

  • How to invest

    I have written about investments before. But it is worth going over again.

    The problem is the medium term investment area. Where most of us have our investments. Mutual funds, pensions and the like. This is the near term to 25 year investment timeframe.

    The investment area that works, if done correctly, is following Warren Buffet’s example of investing in undervalued stocks and holding for more than 30 years, indeed he doesn’t sell.

    The other area that works, but is difficult to master, is the very short-term stuff. I cover this every week in this blog.

    Okay, we have only two time-frames that we can invest with confidence: the very long and the very short.

    Why does the middle investment area not work? because of market volatility and the probability of a market crash within that time frame.

    A market crash for the Warren Buffet model, the very long-term investors, is just a blip in the big scheme of things. Not a problem. In the Buffet model we go through many crashes and use them as opportunities to add more stocks.

    A market crash for the day traders and daily chart readers (like myself) is not normally an issue because the signals of a crash will show on the day and get out stops are very tight for these type of investors. Actually, for these guys, if they’re good, a crash is a big payday. They’re taking it all from the mutual funds.

    For the Warren Buffet followers among us we need excellent fundamental information which we review annually. This information we’ll cover in another blog.

    On the other extreme, the short-term investors, day trading and daily chart reading, is not for everyone.

    So that leaves us back with what to do about the middle timeframe investing problem.

    If we have to be a middle term investor then avoid the traditional, heavily biased towards stocks, mutual funds.

    Watch carefully where the mutual fund invests. Few funds balance investments between cash, stocks, bonds and commodities. Funds that do this, and not being more than 25% invested in stocks, are extremely steady funds and good medium term investments.

    If we do have to go the mutual route then costs are a big factor. For every 1% that we pay a mutual fund will result in 20% to the fund managers over the medium time frame. Look for a cost of around 0.5%, no more. Same goes for pension funds.

    The majority of mutual funds, however, invest more heavily in stocks and most don’t beat the index. These mutual funds are in the danger zone. When a stock crash happens the fund profit and much of the capital is wiped out. Allow several years to get back to neutral. Not a lot of fun.

    So, if we have to invest in the middle term investments then look for: a fund (mutual and pension) that has low fund costs; and an investment portfolio that balances bonds, cash, commodities and stocks – and is particularly light on stocks.