Tag Archives: fundamental

Are Markets Efficient?

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When investing your money you’ll hear many different forms of opinion. Experts like Dave Ramsey will tell you to invest in growth stock mutual funds, others will say that index funds are the way to go. Then there is a group of investors that says you can beat the market by buying “undervalued” stocks.

The question that arises is, is there such a thing as an undervalued stock, and if so, is there a reliable way to take advantage of this “market inefficiency”.

Your investment philosophy in stocks is largely dependent on your opinion on what’s called the Efficient Market Theory (EMT). This theory states that markets are fully efficient. In other words any given price in the markets reflects the cumulative “wisdom” of all investors actings logically on fundamental data regarding value.

Essentially the market, according to this theory, is always acting completely logically based on the current information. So at any given point the market isn’t overvalued or undervalued – it’s priced at the fair equilibrium price given the current information available.

Some practitioners and theorists have brought up concerns with the theory stating that it doesn’t accurately reflect the actual results we see in the real world. For example, in the tech “bubble” of 2000, were investors acting completely logically on the market’s information or was there inefficiency?

Ultimately you’ll have to make your own determination. At the moment there isn’t unanimous agreement by the community.

Does Active Management Have a Place in the Modern Investment Portfolio?

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As index funds have become more and more popular a rising question has been, does active management still make sense for the average investor? Answer is of course not simple enough for a yes or no answer. However there are a few pros and cons we can look at for the two options. First let’s look at the advantages of passive management:

1) Relative autonomy 

Time is often saved from having passive investments. While of course there is initial research that goes into selecting the underlying ETF’s or mutual funds, once set up your strategy you will have relatively low time costs going forward.

2) Lower expenses

With passive management comes low expenses. Over the long term expenses can eat into  a large portion of your returns so paying close attention to this is crucial.

3) Lower taxes

Active management usually means less trading and less trading means both less transaction costs and less capital gains tax. Both of these add up in the long term.

Now that we’ve covered a few of the pros of passive management let’s dive into some of the pros of the alternative…

1) Potential for greater returns

By definition a passive manager can’t meaningfully beat their respective benchmark. However with active management everything changes. There is also ways a chance for outperformance. Of course the flip side of this double-edged sword is that you can underperform, which is often the case.

2) Lower volatility

Depending on the management style you are able to experience lower volatility in your investments from active management.

So which should you choose? After everything is said and done the thing that matters the most is your returns relative to the corresponding benchmark index. For example if you’re comparing a large-cap active fund verses and S&P 500 index fund.

Once you’ve selected your funds for comparison you need to determine if a) your fund has outperformed the benchmark in the past enough to cover expenses and additional active costs and b) will the fund continue to perform this way or better in the future.

If you can answer yes for both of these questions you may have a great candidate for an active portion of your portfolio.

The last option you have available is to execute the active management your self. This is a whole different story that deserves it’s own separate discussion for a different post. For the time being focus on comparing returns both pasts and potential for the future.

Dollar-Cost Average or Lump Sum into the Market?

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Dollar-Cost Averaging is the process of purchasing securities over an extended period of time with the same dollar amount each time. Lump Sum investing on the other hand, involves just putting all your money into the market at once.

For example if you’re wanting to invest $100,000 should you put it all in the market all at once or over a few months? Many people might suggest putting it in over a period of time. However my suggestion is that for most cases, the opposite is actually the wisest move. Let me explain.

If you were to run with the $100,000 example, a simple dollar cost average might look like putting $5,000 in the market for 20 months. The other scenario is just putting the $100,000 in right now.

In most cases putting everything in is a better move because on average, the market goes up most of the time. So if you dollar cost average, you’d, on average, be missing out on the growth by keeping your money out of the market.

In the smaller percentage of times that the market goes down directly following investment, then dollar-cost averaging can make sense. For example if the market has been Bullish for many years with PE ratios climbing, looking at dollar-cost averaging can make sense.

Before I finish, please click here to take a look at a blog page that covers many investment topics. He has a post from early this year that covers this topic concisely: Exploring Dollar Cost Averaging Verses Other Strategies

Thanks, hope you have a great day.

Fundamental Vs Technical Analysis

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When it comes to picking specific stocks for investment, there are two ways to analyze them. The first is Fundamental Analysis.

Fundamental analysis the process of examining a company’s “fundamentals”. This means you look into their balance sheet, their income statement and the statement of cashflows. You look at the concrete facts about the company.

Ask questions like, is this business profitable? Do the facts suggest it will increase profitability in the next few years?

What kinds of debts (short-term and long-term) does this business have? Will it be able to pay them?

What weaknesses are there to this business and its market that could challenge its position? What are its strengths?

The second type of analysis is Technical Analysis. This involves projecting the stock price based on the trends. You look at the 50 day moving average, and even the 200-moving average. This is more of a charts and trends-based analytical process.

Overall, for long-term investors, fundamental analysis is the way to go. Not only does Fundamental analysis involve more logical and foundational decision-making, it is also the strategy used by some of the best investors in the world like Warren Buffet. Overall, if you’ll wondering which strategy is best, consider your purpose for investing.

Different Stock Investing Strategies

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I am going to briefly cover the top most widely used “investment” strategies for stocks. Technically not all of these methods are investing because a few of them involve short term trading.

1. Stock Index Mutual Funds

There are many types of indexes. Indexes are essentially a predetermined basket of stocks that are formulated using a set of rules. For example the most widely used index, the S&P 500, is an index that incorporates the 500 largest companies in the US and weighs them in the index accordingly. There are other indexes such as small-cap indexes or tech stock indexes. The bottom line is that with an index you are purchasing a tiny portion of a large basket of US stocks that is going to reflect your sector of choice.

2. Actively Managed Mutual Funds

Actively managed indexed funds are very similar to indexes except for 1 key difference: They aren’t bound by a predetermined set of guidelines. For example an active mutual fund might have a focus on large-cap stocks or international stocks, yet there aren’t any rules on how much of each of these have to be purchased. This is different from an index where the predetermined weight of each stock is set in stone. Out of this difference comes an increase in management fees because of the funds active, and therefore more costly management structure.

3. Value Investing

This is the method used by the smartest and most successful investors (in my opinion). Warren Buffet is the most famous example of this. Value investing involves determining a company’s value (regardless of current perceived value) by looking at a balance sheet and income statements using fundamental analysis. As the investor sees a price drop well below it’s determined real value the value investor can seize up good deals and hold on for the long-term.

4. Day Trading

This is a common strategy by short-term investors who use primarily technical analysis (looking at charts and trends) to make “investing” decisions about which stocks to buy and then sell quickly for a profit. The risky thing about this is that if you accidentally buy a stock or ETF that suddenly drops in price, you could get stuck with a plummeting investment that was truly overvalued.

5. Random Strategy

This strategy is specifically for people who don’t know what they’re doing and don’t even pretend to try to act like it. They randomly purchase stocks that “sound cool” and then hope that they rise in price. By far this is the stupidest strategy just behind day trading. You can lose your shirt much easier with mindless/random investing or day trading than you can with the other strategies I outlined above.

Conclusion:

Whatever you do, please don’t choose route 5, and preferably strategy 4 as well. Not only is day trading risky and the fees expensive, it has also be statistically been proven to outperform traditional investing methods over the long-term.