Whilst having breakfast I came across this blurb from an individual who is wanting to move from the sell side of the industry to the advisory/money management.
These are his rules for investing –
- Industries are under-analyzed, relative to the market on the whole, and relative to individual companies. Spend time trying to find good companies with strong balance sheets in industries with lousy pricing power, and cheap companies in good industries, where the trends are not fully discounted.
- Purchase equities that are cheap relative to other names in the industry. Depending on the industry, this can mean low P/E, low P/B, low P/S, low P/CFO, low P/FCF, or low EV/EBITDA.
- Stick with higher quality companies for a given industry.
- Purchase companies appropriately sized to serve their market niches.
- Analyze financial statements to avoid companies that misuse generally accepted accounting principles and overstate earnings.
- Analyze the use of cash flow by management, to avoid companies that invest or buy back their stock when it dilutes value, and purchase those that enhance value through intelligent buybacks and investment.
- Rebalance the portfolio whenever a stock gets more than 20% away from its target weight. Run a largely equal-weighted portfolio because it is genuinely difficult to tell what idea is the best. Keep about 30-40 names for diversification purposes.
- Make changes to the portfolio 3-4 times per year. Evaluate the replacement candidates as a group against the current portfolio. New additions must be better than the median idea currently in the portfolio. Companies leaving the portfolio must be below the median idea currently in the portfolio.
As hard as I try I couldn’t find one that pertained to either trend or money management. What I did see what a lot of homilies and feel good statements that make investors feel as if they know something about what is happening. But left them hanging by the short and curlies when it comes to actually being able to survive in the market
