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Before you can begin investing, you must open a brokerage account (for those of you who don't know what this is, read the article "What is a Broker" in the Beginner's Corner). As an investor, choosing a broker is one of the most important decisions you'll have to make. Here are five things you want to look for before you open an account.
1. Full Service Broker vs. Discount Broker
There are two different types of brokers; traditional (also known as "full service") and discount. If you open decide to open an account with a traditional brokerage firm, you will work one-on-one with a personal stock broker. He or she will offer investment ideas, prepare reports about your portfolio, give you a run-down of how well your investments are doing, and generally be available with a single phone call or email to buy or sell stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or other investments for your account. In addition, traditional brokers offer a variety of different research sources to their customers. In exchange for this one-on-one service and guidance, you will be charged a significantly higher commission (we talk more about the price consideration below.) A few examples of this type of brokerage firm are A.G. Edwards, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and Merrill Lynch. (*Note: Merrill Lynch now offers both full service and discount brokerage accounts to customers.)
Discount brokers, on the other hand, are geared toward the do-it-yourself investor. Generally, they will not offer investment advice. They will simply execute orders once you've decided to buy or sell an investment. Instead of working with the same stock broker, you will do most of your trading online, or if you decide to call in your order, with the first available broker. Recently, discount firms have been offering research that is on par with those offered at the traditional brokerage firms. Some excellent examples of these types of brokers are E-Trade, Ameritrade, and TD Waterhouse, to name a few. In exchange for giving up personal contact with a regular broker, investors will be charged a significantly lower commission.
Commissions
Although the largest difference in between traditional and discount brokers is the cost of each transaction, differences in commission prices between two firms of the same kind can be tremendous. One discount broker may charge $30 per trade, whereas another may charge no more than $8. In some cases, the higher price means higher service, faster execution (i.e., your buy and sell orders are carried out in a shorter period of time), and more perks, but this is not always the case. That is why it is important to look around and compare brokerage firms before you open an account.
Minimum Opening Balance and Maintenance Fees
Each broker has a minimum opening balance requirement. Some are as low as $500, most are around $1,000, and several are higher. The general rule of thumb is you should have at least $1,000 when you go to open an account. Be careful though; some brokerage firms may have a low opening balance but will charge you a maintenance fee if your balance falls below a certain amount. Although the fee may be as little as five to fifteen dollars per quarter, it can significantly eat up your investment returns if you are just starting out (e.g., $60 per year in fees on $1,000 account balance is equal to 6% interest!)
Services, Perks, Research, and Investment Tools
No broker offers the exact same set of tools, research, and perks to their customers. Some will allow you to instantly log in to your account via the Internet and print out an analysis of your portfolio, view the balance of your account for the past six months, check your realized and unrealized gains, and view dividend records for the past few years. Others may be slim on features such as this, but offer amazing research that you can't get elsewhere. If execution time is important to you, check out the firm's policies. One online discount broker promises to execute your trade in 60 seconds or less, or you will not be charged a commission.
Lately, a lot of brokerages have begun offering Visa Check Cards which work exactly like a credit card. The difference is, the money you spend is taken directly out of your brokerage account. This way, you have the combined functionality of a checking / savings / money market account with a stocks / bonds investment account. It is tremendously convenient and can help simplify your finances. If you are looking for an all-in-one solution, an asset management account may be a more attractive alternative.
Online Availability - Interface and Ease Of Use
Before you open an account, you should fire up your favorite Internet browser and visit the web page of each of the brokerage firms you are considering. If you plan on doing a lot of your research or trading online, the feel of the site is going to be almost as important as the other benefits and services offered.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Understanding Intrinsic Value and Why Different Businesses Deserve Different Valuations
Readers of this site know that I’m an unabashed, dyed-in-the-wool value investor. Yet, a mistake many people tend to make is to associate this with only buying low price-to-earnings ratio stocks. While this approach has certainly generated above-average returns over long-periods of time (see Tweedy, Browne & Company’s publication What Has Worked in Investing), it is not the ideal situation.
Understanding Intrinsic Value and Why Different Businesses Deserve Different Valuations
At its core, the basic definition for the intrinsic value of every asset in the world is simple: It is all of the cash flows that will be generated by that asset discounted back to the present moment at an appropriate rate that factors in opportunity cost (typically measured against the risk-free U.S. Treasury) and inflation. Figuring out how to apply that to individual stocks can be extremely difficult depending upon the nature and economics of the particular business. As Benjamin Graham, the father of the security analysis industry, entreated his disciples, however, one need not know the exact weight of a man to know that he is fat or the exact age of a woman to know she is old. By focusing only on those opportunities that are clearly and squarely in your circle of competence and you know to be better than average, you have a much higher likelihood of experiences good, if not great, results over long periods of time.
All businesses are not created equal. An advertising firm that requires nothing more than pencils and desks is inherently a better business than a steel mill that, just to begin operating, requires tens of millions of dollar or more in startup capital investment. All else being equal, an advertising firm rightfully deserves a higher price to earnings multiple because in an inflationary environment, the owners (shareholders) aren’t going to have to keep shelling out cash for capital expenditures to maintain the property, plant, and equipment. This is also why intelligent investors must distinguish between the reported net income figure and true, “economic” profit, or “owner” earnings as Warren Buffett has called it. These figures represent the amount of cash that the owner could take out of the business and reinvest elsewhere or spend on diamonds, houses, planes, charitable donations, or gold-plated fine china.
In other words, it doesn’t matter what the reported net income is, but rather, how many hamburgers the owner can buy relative to his investment in the business. That’s why capital-intensive enterprises are typically anathema to long-term investors as they realize very little of their reported income will translate into tangible, liquid wealth because of a very, very important basic truth: Over the long-term, the rise in an investor’s net worth is limited to the return on equity generated by the underlying company. Anything else, such as relying on a bull market or that the next person in line will pay more for the company than you (the appropriately dubbed “greater fool” theory) is inherently speculative. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be in doubt about my ability to retire comfortably.
The result of this fundamental viewpoint is that two businesses might have identical earnings of $10 million, yet Company ABC may generate only $5 million and the other, Company XYZ, $20 million in “owner earnings”. Therefore, Company XYZ could have a price-to-earnings ratio four times higher than its competitor ABC yet still be trading at the same value.
The Importance of a Margin of Safety
The danger with this approach is that, if taken too far as human psychology is apt to do, is that any basis for rational valuation is quickly thrown out the window. Typically, if you are paying more than 15x earnings for a company, you need to seriously examine the underlying assumptions you have for its future profitable and intrinsic value. With that said, a wholesale rejection of shares over that price is not wise. A year ago, I remember reading a story detailing that in the 1990’s, the cheapest stock in retrospect was Dell Computers at 50x earnings. That’s right – had you bought it at that price, you would have absolutely crushed nearly every other investment because the underlying profits really did live up to Wall Street’s expectations, and then some! However, would you have been comfortable having your entire net worth invested in such a risky business if you didn’t understand the economics of the computer industry, the future drivers of demand, the commodity nature of the PC and the low-cost structure that gives Dell a superior advantage over competitors, and the distinct possibility that one fatal mistake could wipeout a huge portion of your net worth? Probably not.
The Ideal Compromise
The perfect situation is when you get an excellent business that generates copious amounts of cash with little or no capital investment on the part of the owners relative to the profits at a steep discount to intrinsic value, such as American Express during the Salad Oil scandal or Wells Fargo when it traded at 5x earnings during the real estate crash of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. A nice test you can use is to close your eyes and try to imagine what a business will look like in ten years; do you think it will be bigger and more profitable? What about the profits – how will they be generated? What are the threats to the competitive landscape? An example that might help: Do you think Blockbuster will still be the dominant video rental franchise? Personally, it is my belief that the model of delivering plastic disks is entirely antiquated and as broadband becomes faster and faster, the content will eventually be streamed, rented, or purchased directly from the studios without any need for a middle man at all, allowing the creators of content to keep the entire capital. That would certainly cause me to require a much larger margin of safety before buying into an enterprise that faces such a very real technological obsolesce problem.
Understanding Intrinsic Value and Why Different Businesses Deserve Different Valuations
At its core, the basic definition for the intrinsic value of every asset in the world is simple: It is all of the cash flows that will be generated by that asset discounted back to the present moment at an appropriate rate that factors in opportunity cost (typically measured against the risk-free U.S. Treasury) and inflation. Figuring out how to apply that to individual stocks can be extremely difficult depending upon the nature and economics of the particular business. As Benjamin Graham, the father of the security analysis industry, entreated his disciples, however, one need not know the exact weight of a man to know that he is fat or the exact age of a woman to know she is old. By focusing only on those opportunities that are clearly and squarely in your circle of competence and you know to be better than average, you have a much higher likelihood of experiences good, if not great, results over long periods of time.
All businesses are not created equal. An advertising firm that requires nothing more than pencils and desks is inherently a better business than a steel mill that, just to begin operating, requires tens of millions of dollar or more in startup capital investment. All else being equal, an advertising firm rightfully deserves a higher price to earnings multiple because in an inflationary environment, the owners (shareholders) aren’t going to have to keep shelling out cash for capital expenditures to maintain the property, plant, and equipment. This is also why intelligent investors must distinguish between the reported net income figure and true, “economic” profit, or “owner” earnings as Warren Buffett has called it. These figures represent the amount of cash that the owner could take out of the business and reinvest elsewhere or spend on diamonds, houses, planes, charitable donations, or gold-plated fine china.
In other words, it doesn’t matter what the reported net income is, but rather, how many hamburgers the owner can buy relative to his investment in the business. That’s why capital-intensive enterprises are typically anathema to long-term investors as they realize very little of their reported income will translate into tangible, liquid wealth because of a very, very important basic truth: Over the long-term, the rise in an investor’s net worth is limited to the return on equity generated by the underlying company. Anything else, such as relying on a bull market or that the next person in line will pay more for the company than you (the appropriately dubbed “greater fool” theory) is inherently speculative. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be in doubt about my ability to retire comfortably.
The result of this fundamental viewpoint is that two businesses might have identical earnings of $10 million, yet Company ABC may generate only $5 million and the other, Company XYZ, $20 million in “owner earnings”. Therefore, Company XYZ could have a price-to-earnings ratio four times higher than its competitor ABC yet still be trading at the same value.
The Importance of a Margin of Safety
The danger with this approach is that, if taken too far as human psychology is apt to do, is that any basis for rational valuation is quickly thrown out the window. Typically, if you are paying more than 15x earnings for a company, you need to seriously examine the underlying assumptions you have for its future profitable and intrinsic value. With that said, a wholesale rejection of shares over that price is not wise. A year ago, I remember reading a story detailing that in the 1990’s, the cheapest stock in retrospect was Dell Computers at 50x earnings. That’s right – had you bought it at that price, you would have absolutely crushed nearly every other investment because the underlying profits really did live up to Wall Street’s expectations, and then some! However, would you have been comfortable having your entire net worth invested in such a risky business if you didn’t understand the economics of the computer industry, the future drivers of demand, the commodity nature of the PC and the low-cost structure that gives Dell a superior advantage over competitors, and the distinct possibility that one fatal mistake could wipeout a huge portion of your net worth? Probably not.
The Ideal Compromise
The perfect situation is when you get an excellent business that generates copious amounts of cash with little or no capital investment on the part of the owners relative to the profits at a steep discount to intrinsic value, such as American Express during the Salad Oil scandal or Wells Fargo when it traded at 5x earnings during the real estate crash of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. A nice test you can use is to close your eyes and try to imagine what a business will look like in ten years; do you think it will be bigger and more profitable? What about the profits – how will they be generated? What are the threats to the competitive landscape? An example that might help: Do you think Blockbuster will still be the dominant video rental franchise? Personally, it is my belief that the model of delivering plastic disks is entirely antiquated and as broadband becomes faster and faster, the content will eventually be streamed, rented, or purchased directly from the studios without any need for a middle man at all, allowing the creators of content to keep the entire capital. That would certainly cause me to require a much larger margin of safety before buying into an enterprise that faces such a very real technological obsolesce problem.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
10 reasons to invest in gold coins
There are many reasons today in this global economy to invest in Gold. I’m not just talking gold stocks but actual physical gold coins, jewelry, ingots, & gold stocks. Since ancient times gold coins have been a accepted and valid form of currency. Gold in time will always increase in value due to devaluation of paper money. So a good way to improve your portfolio is to invest inn new and old gold coins. You can purchase them from pawn shops to online market places including EBay. Thus by keeping coins or gold investments with in your portfolio you can be assured that the value of your portfolio will increase over time. Look at the top Ten reasons to invest in gold today
Here is a list of the top 10 reasons to invest in gold coins:
1. Gold coins are a liquid investment. You can sell the metal to anyone and receive cash for it.
2. You are almost guaranteed a profit from having gold investments. The investment of gold coins increases in value. In February of 2004 gold was going for 400 an ounce. Just four short years later its trading in the 800-1000 dollar range per ounce. If your investment is in coins over time coins become scarce so investment will always increase.
3. There is a small comfort level in having coins or bullion in you portfolio. You can rest assured even if the economy is tough, you have a safer investment.
4. Certified gold coins, have limited mintages, governments only release small quantities of coins at one time to help increase the value of each individual coin
5. Coins are easily transportable either in a small bag or if selling them you are able to ship them worldwide for a lower cost.
6. Gold coins are simply stunning to look at. The greatest design is considered that of Augustus St. Gaudens who was commissioned by the American Mint to design the famous Double Eagle Coin from 1905-1907. In my opinion all the American coins are stunning, look for Indian Heads, Quarter Eagles; Eagles, and Double Eagles, coins are always a great investment.
7. Certified gold coins cannot be confiscated by any government agency just based on the premise that it needs them. “Should something like madoff happen they probably will take them away pending legal issues.”
8. Gold is also a legal asset to own where regular money is owned by the government and gold is the last legal asset to own in the world.
9. Gold coins are easily obtained easy to purchase and easy to sell. There are many places online and in your local markets to purchase and trade them.
10. Gold coins are fun to collect, so collect them first and foremost for the enjoyment.
Here is a list of the top 10 reasons to invest in gold coins:
1. Gold coins are a liquid investment. You can sell the metal to anyone and receive cash for it.
2. You are almost guaranteed a profit from having gold investments. The investment of gold coins increases in value. In February of 2004 gold was going for 400 an ounce. Just four short years later its trading in the 800-1000 dollar range per ounce. If your investment is in coins over time coins become scarce so investment will always increase.
3. There is a small comfort level in having coins or bullion in you portfolio. You can rest assured even if the economy is tough, you have a safer investment.
4. Certified gold coins, have limited mintages, governments only release small quantities of coins at one time to help increase the value of each individual coin
5. Coins are easily transportable either in a small bag or if selling them you are able to ship them worldwide for a lower cost.
6. Gold coins are simply stunning to look at. The greatest design is considered that of Augustus St. Gaudens who was commissioned by the American Mint to design the famous Double Eagle Coin from 1905-1907. In my opinion all the American coins are stunning, look for Indian Heads, Quarter Eagles; Eagles, and Double Eagles, coins are always a great investment.
7. Certified gold coins cannot be confiscated by any government agency just based on the premise that it needs them. “Should something like madoff happen they probably will take them away pending legal issues.”
8. Gold is also a legal asset to own where regular money is owned by the government and gold is the last legal asset to own in the world.
9. Gold coins are easily obtained easy to purchase and easy to sell. There are many places online and in your local markets to purchase and trade them.
10. Gold coins are fun to collect, so collect them first and foremost for the enjoyment.
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