“At the beginning prices are driven by fundamentals,
And at some point speculation drives them.
It’s that old story: What the wise man does in the beginning,
The fool does in the end.”
Warren Buffett
The Tao of Warren Buffett
Stock Picks
Purpose of this Section:
This section contains market background and screened stocks or Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) that may be suitable for your portfolio. Use them as one of your inputs when investing.
The Goal:
My goal in investing is to put cash in my pocket. It is not to own a stock or stocks..
My benchmark is an 11 percent per annum return (which is the long term return of the S & P 500)...This benchmark is realistic and helps to avoid being greedy.
My personal goal is to do better than the benchmark by using the ODDS—ON Investing™ disciplines discussed in the ODDS-ON Investing™ pages of this website.
Key Insights for Investors:
Perspective is essential in the current exceptional environment. Here are some long term perspectives relevant to investing as you reflect on life, the economy, the market and individual investments in order to put cash in your pocket:
- Individuals create wealth; Government can only shift wealth.
- In 1776, when Adam Smith, a moral philosopher and the father of modern economics wrote the book that defined how free enterprise works to create value, he called it The Wealth of Nations, NOT The Wealth of Individuals.
Adam Smith wrote with great understanding of human nature, and knew that in the context of a free democracy, free enterprise is not an exercise in anarchy.
- The concepts in ODDS-ON Investing™ work because Adam Smith did not anticipate that academics, accountants and regulators would permit a Defect in the way that we PRACTICE free enterprise to exist so that wealth shifters in board rooms, on Wall Street and in government could use the Defect to make a lottery out of the livelihood and life savings of their fellow citizens.
- Hope cannot repeal the fundamental laws of human nature that were imbued in us by the same God that gave each of us the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness…It’s a package deal that no man can change—though some will try.