When most kids wanted the funny pages I wanted the financial section of the
newspaper. Unfortunately, I never had the means to do much more let my brain
process the numbers, looking for ways to turn a profit. I did manage a little
foray into the world of investing in the early 1980's. I managed to pull most of
my money into cash so I could pay off debt before the crash of 1987 but I never
did much in the way of real investing after that until just recently. Over the
years, I have competed in various portfolio competitions with some pretty darn
good success. Sadly, my father passed away last year. He left my sisters and me
each with a part of a small portfolio. It was money I had not counted on having
so it was time to put all of my theories and the model for investing I'd
developed over the years into action.
The first thing I had to do was figure out what my father had it mind when he
put his portfolio together. Fortunately, that was not difficult. My father had a
very low tolerance for risk and the portfolio reflected that with a mix of
stable blue-chip stocks and high yielding utility stocks. While this type of
portfolio is very good if you want a steady albeit modest cash flow with only
limited growth potential, a more diversified portfolio with significantly more
growth potential better fits my investment philosophy.
Okay, so how did I end up here with this blog. As a high school math teacher,
the stock market comes in very handy as a teaching tool particularly for
interpreting and analyzing graphs. Fortunately, a key element for identifying
when I buy and when I sell any particular stock is technical analysis based. My
kids in class always think they can do a better job at picking stocks than I can
and ultimately realize they are wrong. This semester my kids in class did come
up with a couple of good ideas I thought had potential. The first idea was to
write a blog about my adventures in investing so people could follow my ups and
downs. So here I am writing this blog. The second idea they had was to teach a
course about and with the mathematics needed to understand, analyze and invest
in the stock market. This one is going to take a little time. I have to write
the curriculum and then get it approved by the county. Imagine that an honors
level math elective that has a very high level of critical analysis and depends
on a students ability to use 21st century life skills.
Anyway, I'm not real sure in which direction this blog will go. Let's face it,
I'm just a high school math teacher that loves the way you can use numbers to
understand the stock market. I am not an investment guru nor do I want to be. I
do believe though with a little common sense, an understanding of how corporate
America works and a good analysis and evaluation of the numbers anybody can
build a nice nest egg in the stock market. Actually, the same rules apply to the
bond, currency, options and future markets. Since I only have a limited
understand of those markets, I will most likely limit myself to talking about
the equity markets.
And with that, I think I will leave it there for the time being. I guess this is
as good of starting point as any and Warren Buffet if you are reading this, my
goal is not to dethrone you.
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| The last 3 months of the S&P 500 ending 04 June 13 |
A specail thanks to www.stockcharts.com. This is where I made today's chart. The sight has tons of free stuff from charting tools to definitions tutorial videos.
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