The
Internet's Most Popular Wealth, Health and Wisdom EZine
Comments/Questions: 1-866-344-7200
www.earlytorise.com
Message #1746
Saturday, June 3, 2006
WEALTHY: The only 2 things an investor can count on (Dan Ferris)
HEALTHY: Chocolate?
WISE: Warren Buffett on the trouble with political/economic forecasts
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
Ya got me! (Clayton Makepeace)
6 years … and still going strong (Michael Masterson)
Add the word "ennui" to your vocabulary
Why Try To Catch Fish In The Big, Wide Ocean When You Can Easily Scoop Them Out Of A Barrel?
Ideas, not money, are the true currency of business.
Ideas for developing new products and services, for managing a business more effectively, for marketing and selling your product or service, for getting more business and for making tons more money.
Take one step and your family, friends and business associates will be amazed at your newfound ability to come up with ideas and solve the toughest problems… and you will come up with at least one idea that's a massive, life-changing breakthrough.
Here's how to get started today.
- Charlie Byrne
"We will continue to ignore political and economic forecasts, which are an expensive distraction for many investors and businessmen."
- Warren Buffett
The Secret of Making Money in Stocks
By Dan Ferris
If you'd had a crystal ball in 1960, you would have accurately predicted:
the assassination of John F. Kennedy
the expansion of both the welfare state and the Vietnam War ("guns and butter")
Richard Nixon's wage and price controls and his subsequent resignation
the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union
a one-day drop in the Dow Jones Industrials Average of 508 points
gold prices fluctuating from $35 to $850
Treasury bill yields fluctuating between 2.8 percent and 17.4 percent
the Arab Oil Embargo
lines at gas stations
tanks in Tiananmen Square
the failure of Enron, WorldCom, and others
Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, and junk bond trading scandals
… and much more
Had you seen these cataclysmic events coming, you might well have concluded that stocks would be a terrible investment for the next couple of decades – that, in effect, the world as you knew it was coming to an end.
But, in the words of Warren Buffett, "none of these blockbuster events made the slightest dent in Ben Graham's investment principles. Nor did they render unsound the negotiated purchases of fine businesses at sensible prices. Imagine the cost to us, then, if we had let a fear of unknowns cause us to defer or alter the deployment of capital … Fear is a foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist." [Ed. Note: Ben Graham was an influential economist and investor, often called the "Father of Value Investing."]
In 15 years of doing financial research, writing, and investing, here's what I've learned about predictions that has helped me make money and avoid losses: Interest rates will fall. Interest rates will rise. Stocks will fall. Stocks will rise. This or that candidate will be elected president. But nobody knows for sure. There are only two things about the future that you can count on:
1. Trees don't grow to the sky.
2. The world has a habit of not coming to an end.
So, despite the occurrence of all the events listed above, and much more, knowledgeable value-oriented investors went on to earn outsized rates of return.
In other words, it was far more important not to get scared out of stocks and to know something about investing than it was to have been able to predict some of the worst events and trends of the last 40 years.
The story of the Sequoia Fund provides an example for investors to follow. Sequoia is the fund Warren Buffett recommended to his former clients in 1970, the year after he closed his investment partnership. Richard Cunniff, a former Ben Graham student, still runs Sequoia. (Bill Ruane, Cunniff's partner and a fellow Graham student, passed away earlier this year.)
The Sequoia Fund under-performed the S&P 500 in its first four years. It has under-performed the S&P 500 in 14 of the last 34 years. That's 41 percent of the time.
But in the last 34 years, Sequoia has averaged 15.86 percent annual returns. A $10,000 investment in 1970 is worth about $1.9 million today, versus $535,000 for the S&P 500. If you'd pulled your money out after those first four years and put it in an index fund, you'd have made a huge mistake.
Think about that. Four years wasn't enough time to give a true picture of the soundness of Sequoia's basic value-oriented approach to investing.
Nearly half the time, getting rich felt like losing ground when compared to the rest of the market. In some years, getting rich by giving your money to Sequoia felt exactly like losing money.
Several other value managers have had equally impressive long-term results during the past few decades. Just go check out the results of Tweedy Browne Company, Longleaf Partners, The Clipper Fund, Third Avenue Funds, and The Oakmark Funds, to name a few.
Warren Buffett is certainly the most famous and successful of the value-oriented investment managers. He's earned himself and his shareholders an average of 21.5 percent a year since 1965, or roughly 2,900 times their money!
That's not a typo. Every $1,000 invested with Buffett in 1965 has become about $2.9 million today. That's the power of compounding. But the power of compounding only works if you follow the advice of another famous investor, Peter Lynch: "The key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them."
This doesn't mean I'm perpetually bullish on the stock market. Quite the contrary. It means you're better off ignoring the movements of the overall market. Instead, you need to learn how to figure out how much a given company is worth. The famous value managers I named above like to buy stocks between 30 percent and 50 percent below their fair value. And they only buy the highest quality businesses. That's how they get those wonderful long-term results.
Over the next 5, 10, or 20 years, there's certain to be a number of unpredictable economic and political shocks around the world. Perhaps there'll be another terrorist attack, a protracted war in the Middle East, or a stock market crash. Who knows?
The answer, of course, is that no one knows. No one has a crystal ball. And even if they did, it wouldn't matter. Because during the next several years, no matter what else happens, you can bet there'll be safe, cheap stocks to buy. They'll treat their shareholders well, compounding at rates far above what bondholders will earn.
As long as you understand that trees don't grow to the sky, and that the world has a way of not coming to an end, you're in the "sweet spot," a place where you won't be distracted by interest rate and stock market prognosticators and their worthless predictions.
[Ed. Note: Dan Ferris is editor in chief of the Stansberry Value Alliance, a group of financial research professionals focused on finding undervalued public equity investment opportunities. The Alliance publishes
By Clayton Makepeace In Message #1728, I wrote an article about the legal issues copywriters and marketers must deal with. In the article, I mentioned some crazy lawsuits I'd found on various websites, followed by the memorable line: "You can't make this stuff up!" Well, it turns out, you CAN make this stuff up. The lawsuits I cited were, evidently, fictitious – and a few of you called me on it. My larger point though, is nonetheless valid: We do live in a lawsuit-happy world. Anyone can sue you for anything at any time. And even if you win, you lose. The legal costs can eat you alive. So, my bad. Please forgive the oversight. But please do not allow it to distract from my major point: Protecting yourself with the strategies I recommend is more than just prudent – it's essential. Protection for Your Heart in the Candy Aisle By Jon Herring You've heard the news: "Chocolate is good for you." And it's true. In fact, it could be even more beneficial than first thought. Researchers in Holland followed 500 men for 15 years. They found that those who ate the most cocoa were 50 percent less likely to die of heart disease. And they discovered that this benefit was conferred with just 4 grams of cocoa per day. That's the amount of cocoa in two Hershey's Kisses – but that doesn't mean you should be eating that kind of candy. It has far too much sugar. If you want to enjoy the health benefits of cocoa, stick to dark chocolate. The darker the better. Most health food stores have an excellent selection of organic dark chocolate to choose from. What Are You Missing in the Financial News? It never ceases to amaze me how the mainstream financial media leave the most important details out of their investment news. Did you know that the government is actually steering the dollar downtrend even as they repeat their belief in a strong dollar? Want to learn more? Read Money Insight each week. At the end of every issue, Money Insight tells you what Wall Street is saying… and what it really means. Plus you'll learn ways to invest and profit off of distorted news…and why this news matters to your portfolio. It takes five minutes of your time to stay one step ahead of the Street. Sign up for Money Insight today. Good investing, Notes from Michael Masterson's Journal: How to Keep On Keeping On I've been writing ETR pretty much nonstop since June 5, 2000. That's six years. Nearly 1750 daily messages. And almost all of those messages have included something from me – an insight on business, a strategy for building wealth, or an observation about how to live a better life. Although it takes just a few minutes for you to read these little essays every day, it takes me, on the average, about 90 minutes to write them. Ninety minutes times 1750 messages equals 2,625 hours spent mentally rummaging around in the same intellectual attic. So I'm sure it won't surprise you to know that I sometimes wake up feeling that I can't write another syllable. But I don't let that stop me. Every job, no matter how interesting it is, can sometimes deplete you. And when you are feeling depleted, it will seem like the problem is the job. "I'd feel a lot better if I could be doing something different," you tell yourself. And so you spend your energy dreaming about doing something else or taking a vacation. But instead of making you feel better, that sort of thinking gets you lost in a maze of psychological ennui, where every apparent exit leads you to a dead end. I have a policy about such self-indulgent depressions: I tolerate them for no more than 24 hours. I tell myself, "You're just having another one of your poor-me, I-hate-my-job episodes. Get through the day and you'll feel better tomorrow." In other words, I ignore my feelings and push on. And, usually, that's the end of it. But every once in a while, my bad feelings don't evaporate with the morning dew. On those rare occasions, the following six-point "working workout" brings my heart and mind back. 1. I remind myself that the problem isn't my job, it's my attitude. I've found that it's almost impossible to complete half of this routine without my mood lifting. And even my darkest moods have been obliterated by doing the full program. Today's Action Plan If you hate your job now and then, keep in mind that everyone occasionally feels what you are feeling. Even the most successful and productive people have periods of time when their productivity and mental energy drop directly into the toilet. When that happens, try Michael's approach. Allow yourself no more than 24 hours of "poor me" thinking. Then, if you're still in a funk, get yourself going again with his six-point "working workout." Free Research Report Reveals Walmart's Billion Dollar Secret: This secret technology is creating record profits at ALL Wal-Mart locations. This razor-thin device is quickly making its way into every product sold in the U.S. And now Microsoft has struck an exclusive partnership with one innovative little company to make this “secret weapon” standard operating software on Microsoft Windows! When Bill Gates puts the full weight of his company behind anything – you know it's only a matter of time before everyone is using it. This backroom partnership will make fast millionaires out of its early investors. Get the free report that reveals the name of the best kept secret on Wall Street — and count yourself among the fortunate few. Go here for the full story. "Ennui" (on-WEE) is a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction resulting from a lack of interest. It is from a French word meaning "to annoy or bore." Example (as I used it today): "Instead of making you feel better, that sort of thinking gets you lost in a maze of psychological ennui, where every apparent exit leads you to a dead end." Michael Have a Want to or send ALL Infringements can be punishable by up to 5 years in prison Ensure that Early to Rise gets If you'd like to suggest Early To Rise to a friend, To BECOME AN EARLY TO RISE MEMBER, please visit: http://www.earlytorise.com/ or email NOTE: If Nothing in this e-mail should be considered All of our employees and agents must wait 24 hours All
Charles Delvalle
2. I recall at least one thing I truly like about my job.
3. I try to do some element of my job better than I have ever done it before.
4. I exercise vigorously for at least 30 minutes.
5. I take a short (20-minute) nap or rejuvenating walk.
6. I do something kind for someone.
Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2006
Question for Michael Masterson?
know the secrets to his success? Have a perplexing business
problem? ETR welcomes your thoughts. Post them online
at http://speakoutforum.com/forum/
questions directly to Support@EarlyToRise.Com
CONTENTS OF THIS E-MAIL ARE COPYRIGHT 2006 BY ETR, LLC.ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED: REPRODUCING ANY PART OF THIS DOCUMENT IS
PROHIBITED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT OF EARLY TO
RISE. Protected by U.S. Copyright Law {Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 101 et seq., Title 18 U.S.C. Section 2319}:
and $250,000 in fines. Are you having trouble receiving
Early to Rise messages?
delivered to your email box, click below:http://www.earlytorise.com/whitelisting.htm
please point them to:http://www.earlytorise.com/SuccessPartnership.htm
support@earlytorise.com
URLs do not appear as live links in your e-mail program,
please cut and paste the full URL into the location or
address field of your browser. Disclaimer: The inclusion of
an ad in ETR does not constitute an explicit endorsement. It
does mean that as far as I know the product is not a
rip-off. When I really like a product and want you to buy it
I'll tell you explicitly. Otherwise, view these ads the way
you would commercials on TV or display ads in the back of
your favorite magazine. Check them out. Make a decision. If
you don't like, ask for a refund. (All products sold here
will carry refunds.)
personalized investment advice. Although our employees may
answer your general customer service questions, they are not
licensed under securities laws to address your particular
investment situation. No communication by our employees to
you should be deemed as personalized investment advice.We
expressly forbid our writers from having a financial
interest in any security recommended to our readers.
after on-line publication or 72 hours after the mailing of
printed-only publication prior to following an initial
recommendation.Any investments recommended in this letter
should be made only after consulting with your investment
advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial
statements of the company.
material on this site is provided for information only and
may not be construed as medical advice or instruction. No
action should be taken based solely on the contents of this
information; instead, readers should consult appropriate
health professionals on any matter relating to their health
and well-being.Similar Articles:
None Found