Becoming the Bull
Becoming the Bull is our bi-montly newsletter delivered right into your email inbox. We write about stategies and the standard practices first-time investors need to know about. If you’re interested in learning about how markets move, why they move, and how to capitalize on the opportunities the stock market offers everyday. Find the widget to the right hand side of this page and enter your address to subscribe.
We’re working on new features including insider interviews with leading economic professionals and wealth management officers, principles, and entrepreneurs.
A selected except from Becoming the Bull:
“Let’s focus on the bottom line, which I think is this: global markets are driving up, stocks, bonds, and commodities are cheap, and as long as this is your first time investing, you’ve got nothing to lose. The recession we’re in began in 2008 as real estate values began what would become a spectacular plunge on account of sub-prime lending to average Joes, over-borrowing by people who couldn’t afford the interest rates, and the foreclosures resulting from this lethal cocktail. Investment losses gained strength along with unemployment and economic slowdown as we came into 2009. Banks were failing left and right, global governments were spending like drunken sailors to provide the economy with much needed cash, and trillions of dollars in investments were literally wiped out by 40% or more. It finally all boiled over in March of 2009, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average, our principle US stock market and a global icon, bottomed out at a disgraceful 6,000 points.
But with great disaster (and if you’ve read this far, congratulations! Here’s your payoff) comes great opportunity. Stocks were trading at 60-90% discounts to their 52-week high premiums. Some of these stocks were dogs, sure (mostly the financials), but many were strong, otherwise healthy companies who were now severely undervalued in terms of their stock price. So if you were a first time investor (no money in the stock markets), you were basically on the outside looking in. If you were well educated, followed the rules, and had some cajones’ you would swoop in and pick up some stellar stocks at rock bottom prices, and then just wait it out. Surely, these prices would come back up when the economy recovers, and maybe even double or triple if the economy were to experience a fierce rally out of these gates of Hell. It would be like raiding a shipwreck for gold.”
- From the October 9th, 2009 publication on the benefits of being a first-time investor during our devastating recession.
