On May 30, we launched The Trading Club to show subscribers exactly how safe trading strategies work using a live $100,000 trading account. As of Friday, August 15, we’re up 9.7% to $109,705 in the first 77 days, or a 55% annualized rate of return, with relatively low volatility along the way.
Many investors believe the biggest mistake you can make is buying a stock that performs poorly. But those mistakes are not as bad as selling great businesses… or not buying them to begin with.
Most investors think of bonds as unspectacular but steady performers whose role is to stabilize a portfolio that also contains the higher-octane asset class of common stocks. But subscribers to our Distressed Investing research know there’s another side to the story.
Asset allocation – how investors invest capital across different asset classes like stocks, bonds, real estate, and commodities – is critical. In fact, research suggests that asset allocation can play a more important role in investors’ long-term success than which individual investments they own.
An investment fad is a short-term financial trend that quickly gains popularity and interest among investors – but typically lacks long-term viability or strong underlying fundamentals. You don’t need a deep understanding of finance – or physics, or astronomy – to spot fads. You simply need a strong mix of skepticism, market awareness, and knowledge of a few bright-red flags.
Today Marty Fridson offers a word of caution for investors: The opportunity to purchase closed-end fund shares for less than the value of the assets they represent sounds like free money. But there’s a catch, he says.
The excerpt below from one of Porter’s classics is about one of the fundamentals of investing at the centerpiece of what we focus on at Porter & Co. Through market cycles, overhyped fads, and speculative trends, his approach to building long-term wealth has remained startlingly consistent.
In P&C insurance, our average return has been 66% over the last three years, with an average holding period of about 18 months. That’s more than double the S&P 500’s returns over matching periods. And we had no losing positions.