Archive for September, 2007
September 27, 2007 - One of the most frequently asked questions I receive from investors is “What is the quickest way to build wealth?” They want to know should they trade options, should they invest in China, Vietnam, and India, or if they should give their money to Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and so on. I answer that question the same way every time: “Learn to manage your own money.” So to let people know why it’s the best way, I’ve compiled 101 Reasons why managing your own money is the quickest way to build wealth. Just click here to read the list.
Technorati Tags: get rich, wealth literacy, fastest way to build wealth, best investment strategies
September 27th, 2007
People have often asked me how I always pick stocks that end up with 20% gains in a couple of months or triple-digit gains in a year. They ask me is it luck? Maybe with a couple of stocks it may have been luck, but luck doesn’t play a role in buying ten or more stocks in the same year that earn more than 80% returns. The key is not to follow the herd, stop listening to the investment talking heads, and to learn an investment system and then be unwaveringly courageous in applying your system. There have been times family and friends have asked me for advice, and I have told them, “Buy this stock. I guarantee you, you will not lose money.” Now I know that there are no guarantees in the stock market, but if you follow certain strategies, you can be 90% sure that the stock will appreciate. With this particular agricultural stock, it was almost the perfect stock, and I was 99.9% sure that the stock would produce monumental gains. Sure enough, the stock exploded almost 130% higher in about a year. And this stock was not some risky penny stock trading at less than a dollar a share. This stock was trading at about $70 a share at the time I advised my friends to buy it. So below are the 10 surefire rules I employ to build enormous gains in investment portfolios.
(1) Buy When Fear is Rampant, Sell When Mania is the Greatest
Every investing course should be accompanied by a psychology course as well. The most difficult thing to do in investing is to buy more when fear and panic is rampant and to sell when mania is the highest. Stock markets and asset classes cycle in peaks and troughs. Most people will not buy stocks until after stocks are plastered all over the news and after they have just risen by 30%, 40%, 50% or more, believing that they will rise higher forever. Buying at the troughs when nobody is talking about a stock or during steep corrections provides a low-risk/high-reward setup for your portfolio.
(2) Learn What Your Neighbor is Doing, Watch Investment Shows on MSNBC and Bloomberg on TV, Listen to the Recommendations of Your Financial Consultant – Then Make Sure that You Don’t Have a Single Thing in Common With Their Strategies
If you are one of the thundering sheep herd and perpetually follow the mindless actions of others, you are virtually guaranteed to lose money or forever relegate your portfolio to average to below-average returns. The surest way to build an investment fortune is to buy asset classes and stocks when nobody is discussing them and to sell them when everyone is talking about them. This requires a nose for market timing. Is market timing impossible
Read more …
September 25th, 2007
September 19, 2007 - Back on March 3, 2007, the following was reported:
“The states would only change the dollar peg simultaneously, U.A.E. Central Bank Governor Sultan Bin Nasser al-Suwaidi told reporters today. The six countries form the Gulf Cooperation Council and their central bank officials meet next in April. The other countries are Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait. “‘We will not act unilaterally,’ al-Suwaidi said in Dubai, U.A.E.”
Not even three weeks later after this coalition of Middle Eastern countries announced their commitment to the dollar, as we reported here on our blog, Kuwait defied this pledge and unpegged its currency from the dollar. Kuwait inferred that pegging its currency to the weak dollar was causing unnecessary inflation. Now, this week, speculation runs rampant that Saudi Arabia is to follow in Kuwait’s footsteps as it failed to take action on the U.S. Fed’s interest rate cut this past September 18th. The cracks keep coming.
investment crisis dollar crisis
Technorati Tags: dollar crisis
September 20th, 2007
September 19, 2007 - “Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights” - Alan Greenspan, 1966, more than 20 years before he served as Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 1987-2006. Obviously, Alan Greenspan’s feelings regarding deficit spending experienced a 180º reversal once he became the U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman. However, one only need to understand the truth in that comment to understand where your money should be invested and why this mini-rally in global markets spurred by the Fed’s decision to cut the Federal Funds rate by 0.50%, even if it should extend into a larger rally, should cause you to be scared, and very scared at that.
Overshadowed by the Fed’s decision to cut interest rates and the subsequent rally in global stock markets was a much more critical story. U.S. Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson recently urged Congress to raise the national debt ceiling, stating that the U.S. would reach the current national debt ceiling by October 1st. Read more …
September 19th, 2007
September 15, 2007 -
Everybody is waiting now for this Tuesday’s decision by the Feds to finally learn how much the Feds slash interest rates. This decision is truly not that important for a number of reasons. (1) The Feds have already slashed interest rates in a couple of manners. One, by already injecting billions and billions of dollars into the banking system, they have already expanded monetary supply (which is the effect lower interest rates would have); and two, they have already slashed the discount rate (the rate at which banks can borrow from the government) again expanding money supply. True, the fed funds rate is what matters to the end consumer, but the actions the Feds already have taken will be harmful on the value of the U.S. dollar. It’s just a sneaky way of doing it without announcing to the world that they’ve slashed interest rates.
Thus, the news this Tuesday is likely to be less than overwhelming from the standpoint of the consumer that is looking for a substantial 50 to 75 basis point cut. Furthermore, the Fed has stated that inflation concerns are more worrisome than concerns of slowing U.S. economic growth. This is a curious statement as the Feds are primarily responsible for creating inflation through their easy money, monetary expansion policies. Their solution to any economic problem in the past has always to break out the printing presses and print as many dollars as is needed to provide a band-aid fix to the problem. And they probably will continue to sacrifice the dollar’s value for the sake of keeping up appearances in the future as well.
Read more …
September 15th, 2007
