Investing for growth is what most people invest for, but exactly how do you go about actually making money? The simple answer is that you have to get in to the right stock when it's cheap and sell it when it's expensinve. There is no more obvious way to invest, but the reality is that there are millions of people trying to do just that, and not making any money at all. Even professional money managers fail to match the performance of the S&P 500 so finding a way to really value a stock is at a premium.
Value investing looks at a company's competitive advantage over its competitors, its product roadmap and sales projections, and the company's management structure and the leaders themselves. All of this information is then used to arrive at a value for the company itself and its stock. The intrinsic value of the stock may or may not be the same value as the price that the stock is currently trading at in the stock market. It is these variations between the observed share price and the calculated intrinsic value that lead to an investment decision. If the intrinsic value of the stock is lower than the current stock price then the company is thought to be overvalued and therefore not a good investment. If, however, the intrinsic value of the stock in higher than the current stock price then the stock is thought to be trading at a discount and would therefore be a good investment choice.
If you want to be an effective value investor you should screen stocks as the first and most important step to make the research part manageable. This should include eliminating companies that don't have earnings, that have high debt-to-equity, low return-on-equity, and companies that don't have consistent positive free cash flow.
There are tools like discounted cash flow models that allow you to asses the intrinsic value of companies. Free cash flow is actually a calculation of the difference between capital expenses and cash flow from operations that you can lookup in the statement of cash flows in the annual reports. Yahoo! Finance and Google finance are good resources for this type of information.
There are countless studies that have shown that value investing works, but lots of investors chase the illusion that companies can grow by 500% in no time. There is no greater joy than when a stock grows really fast, but the reality is that slow growth is the name of the game.
Value investing looks at a company's competitive advantage over its competitors, its product roadmap and sales projections, and the company's management structure and the leaders themselves. All of this information is then used to arrive at a value for the company itself and its stock. The intrinsic value of the stock may or may not be the same value as the price that the stock is currently trading at in the stock market. It is these variations between the observed share price and the calculated intrinsic value that lead to an investment decision. If the intrinsic value of the stock is lower than the current stock price then the company is thought to be overvalued and therefore not a good investment. If, however, the intrinsic value of the stock in higher than the current stock price then the stock is thought to be trading at a discount and would therefore be a good investment choice.
If you want to be an effective value investor you should screen stocks as the first and most important step to make the research part manageable. This should include eliminating companies that don't have earnings, that have high debt-to-equity, low return-on-equity, and companies that don't have consistent positive free cash flow.
There are tools like discounted cash flow models that allow you to asses the intrinsic value of companies. Free cash flow is actually a calculation of the difference between capital expenses and cash flow from operations that you can lookup in the statement of cash flows in the annual reports. Yahoo! Finance and Google finance are good resources for this type of information.
There are countless studies that have shown that value investing works, but lots of investors chase the illusion that companies can grow by 500% in no time. There is no greater joy than when a stock grows really fast, but the reality is that slow growth is the name of the game.
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To learn more about being a value investor visit the Value Investor Headquarters website.
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