By Nathan Slaughter Wednesday, April 28, 2010
http://investinganswers.com/tutorial/how-invest-alongside-great-value-investors-1150
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Don't Time the Market. Do This.
By Chuck Saletta
April 16, 2010
http://www.fool.com/investing/dividends-income/2010/04/16/dont-time-the-market-do-this.aspx
April 16, 2010
http://www.fool.com/investing/dividends-income/2010/04/16/dont-time-the-market-do-this.aspx
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
Five Billionaires Who Live Below Their Means
Five Billionaires Who Live Below Their Means
by Katie Adams
Thursday, April 1, 2010
At least once in your life - maybe even once a week or once a day for that matter - you have fantasized about coming into a lot of money. What would you do if you were worth millions or even billions? Believe it or not there are millionaires and billionaires among us who masquerade as relatively normal, run-of-the-mill people. Take a peek at some of the most frugal wealthy people in the world.
Warren Buffett
Millions of people read Buffett's books and follow his firm, Berkshire Hathaway's, every move. But the real secret to Buffett's personal fortune may be his penchant for frugality. Buffett, who is worth an estimated $47 billion, eschews opulent homes and luxury items. He and his wife still live in their modest home in Omaha, Nebraska which they purchased for just $31,500 more than 50 years ago.
Although he's dined in the best restaurants around the globe, given the choice he would opt for a good burger and fries accompanied by a cold cherry Coke. When asked why he doesn't own a yacht he responded "Most toys are just a pain in the neck." (Find out how he went from selling soft drinks to buying up companies and making billions of dollars.
Carlos Slim
While most of the world is very familiar with Bill Gates, the name Carlos Slim rarely rings a bell. But it's a name worth knowing. Slim, who is a native of Mexico, was just named the world's richest billionaire – that's right, richer than the uber-famous Microsoft founder. Slim is worth more than $53 billion and while he could afford the world's most extravagant luxuries he rarely indulges. He, like Buffett, doesn't own a yacht or plane and he has lived in the same home for over 40 years.
Ingvar Kamprad
The founder of the Swedish furniture phenomenon Ikea struck success with affordable, assemble-it-yourself furniture. For Kamprad, figuring out how to save money isn't just for his customers, it's a high personal value. He's been quoted as saying "Ikea people do not drive flashy cars or stay at luxury hotels." That goes for the founder as well. He flies coach for business and when he needs to get around town locally he either takes the bus or will head out in his 15-year-old Volvo 240 GL.
Chuck Feeney
Growing up in the wake of The Depression as an Irish-American probably has something to do with Feeney's frugality. With a personal motto of "I set out to work hard, not get rich," the co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers has quietly become a billionaire but even more secretively given almost all of it away through his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies. In addition to giving more than $600 million to his alma mater Cornell University, he has given billions to schools, research departments and hospitals.
Loath to spend if he doesn't have to, Feeney beats both Buffett and Kamprad in the donation category, giving out less grants than only Ford and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations. A frequent user of public transportation, Mr. Feeney flies economy class, buys clothes from retail stores, and does not wast money on an extensive shoes closet, stating "you can only wear one pair of shoes at a time". He raised his children in the same way; making them work the same normal summer jobs as most teens.
Frederik Meijer
If you live in the Midwest chances are good that you shop at Meijer's chain of grocery stores. Meijer is worth more than $5 billion and nearly half of that was amassed when everyone else was watching their net worth drop in 2009. Like Buffett he buys reasonably-priced cars and drives them until they die, and like Kamprad he chooses affordable motels when on travel for work. Also, like Chuck Feeney, rather than carelessly spending his wealth Mr. Meijer is focused on the good that it can provide to the community.
The Bottom Line
The dirty little secret of some of the world's wealthiest people is that they rarely act like it. Instead of over-the-top spending, they're busy figuring out how to save and invest to have that much more in the future. It's a habit you might want to consider in order to build up your own little storehouse of cash.
http://finance.yahoo.com/retirement/article/109243/five-billionaires-who-live-below-their-means;_ylt=ArnqJPe1VlTbkFSMSwBaUTJO7sMF;_ylu=X3oDMTE5a2NnaW1hBHBvcwM1BHNlYwN3ZWVrZW5kRWRpdGlvbgRzbGsDNWJpbGxpb25haXJl?mod=retire-planning
by Katie Adams
Thursday, April 1, 2010
At least once in your life - maybe even once a week or once a day for that matter - you have fantasized about coming into a lot of money. What would you do if you were worth millions or even billions? Believe it or not there are millionaires and billionaires among us who masquerade as relatively normal, run-of-the-mill people. Take a peek at some of the most frugal wealthy people in the world.
Warren Buffett
Millions of people read Buffett's books and follow his firm, Berkshire Hathaway's, every move. But the real secret to Buffett's personal fortune may be his penchant for frugality. Buffett, who is worth an estimated $47 billion, eschews opulent homes and luxury items. He and his wife still live in their modest home in Omaha, Nebraska which they purchased for just $31,500 more than 50 years ago.
Although he's dined in the best restaurants around the globe, given the choice he would opt for a good burger and fries accompanied by a cold cherry Coke. When asked why he doesn't own a yacht he responded "Most toys are just a pain in the neck." (Find out how he went from selling soft drinks to buying up companies and making billions of dollars.
Carlos Slim
While most of the world is very familiar with Bill Gates, the name Carlos Slim rarely rings a bell. But it's a name worth knowing. Slim, who is a native of Mexico, was just named the world's richest billionaire – that's right, richer than the uber-famous Microsoft founder. Slim is worth more than $53 billion and while he could afford the world's most extravagant luxuries he rarely indulges. He, like Buffett, doesn't own a yacht or plane and he has lived in the same home for over 40 years.
Ingvar Kamprad
The founder of the Swedish furniture phenomenon Ikea struck success with affordable, assemble-it-yourself furniture. For Kamprad, figuring out how to save money isn't just for his customers, it's a high personal value. He's been quoted as saying "Ikea people do not drive flashy cars or stay at luxury hotels." That goes for the founder as well. He flies coach for business and when he needs to get around town locally he either takes the bus or will head out in his 15-year-old Volvo 240 GL.
Chuck Feeney
Growing up in the wake of The Depression as an Irish-American probably has something to do with Feeney's frugality. With a personal motto of "I set out to work hard, not get rich," the co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers has quietly become a billionaire but even more secretively given almost all of it away through his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies. In addition to giving more than $600 million to his alma mater Cornell University, he has given billions to schools, research departments and hospitals.
Loath to spend if he doesn't have to, Feeney beats both Buffett and Kamprad in the donation category, giving out less grants than only Ford and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations. A frequent user of public transportation, Mr. Feeney flies economy class, buys clothes from retail stores, and does not wast money on an extensive shoes closet, stating "you can only wear one pair of shoes at a time". He raised his children in the same way; making them work the same normal summer jobs as most teens.
Frederik Meijer
If you live in the Midwest chances are good that you shop at Meijer's chain of grocery stores. Meijer is worth more than $5 billion and nearly half of that was amassed when everyone else was watching their net worth drop in 2009. Like Buffett he buys reasonably-priced cars and drives them until they die, and like Kamprad he chooses affordable motels when on travel for work. Also, like Chuck Feeney, rather than carelessly spending his wealth Mr. Meijer is focused on the good that it can provide to the community.
The Bottom Line
The dirty little secret of some of the world's wealthiest people is that they rarely act like it. Instead of over-the-top spending, they're busy figuring out how to save and invest to have that much more in the future. It's a habit you might want to consider in order to build up your own little storehouse of cash.
http://finance.yahoo.com/retirement/article/109243/five-billionaires-who-live-below-their-means;_ylt=ArnqJPe1VlTbkFSMSwBaUTJO7sMF;_ylu=X3oDMTE5a2NnaW1hBHBvcwM1BHNlYwN3ZWVrZW5kRWRpdGlvbgRzbGsDNWJpbGxpb25haXJl?mod=retire-planning
Thursday, April 1, 2010
How Return On Equity Can Help You Find Profitable Stocks
by Ben McClure
It pays to invest in companies that generate profits more efficiently than their rivals. Return on equity (ROE) can help investors distinguish between companies that are profit creators and those that are profit burners. On the other hand, ROE might not necessarily tell the whole story about a company, and therefore must be used carefully.
What Is ROE?
By measuring how much earnings a company can generate from assets, ROE offers a gauge of profit-generating efficiency. ROE helps investors determine whether a company is a lean, mean profit machine or an inefficient clunker. Firms that do a good job of milking profit from their operations typically have a competitive advantage - a feature that normally translates into superior returns for investors. The relationship between the company's profit and the investor's return makes ROE a particularly valuable metric to examine.
To find companies with a competitive advantage, investors can use five-year averages of the ROEs of companies within the same industry.
ROE Calculation
A company's ROE ratio is calculated by dividing the company's net income by its shareholder equity, or book value. The formula is simple:
Net Income/Shareholders' Equity
You can find net income on the income statement, but you can also take the sum of the last four quarters worth of earnings. Shareholders equity, meanwhile, is located on the balance sheet and is simply the difference between total assets and total liabilities. Shareholder equity represents the tangible assets that have been produced by the business. Both net income and shareholder equity should cover the same period of time. (To learn more, read Breaking Down The Balance Sheet.)
How Should ROE Be Interpreted?
ROE offers a useful signal of financial success since it might indicate whether the company is growing profits without pouring new equity capital into the business. A steadily increasing ROE is a hint that management is giving shareholders more for their money, which is represented by shareholders' equity. Simply put, ROE indicates know how well management is employing the investors' capital invested in the company.
It turns out, however, that a company cannot grow earnings faster than its current ROE without raising additional cash. That is, a firm that now has a 15% ROE cannot increase its earnings faster than 15% annually without borrowing funds or selling more shares. But raising funds comes at a cost: servicing additional debt cuts into net income and selling more shares shrinks earnings per share by increasing the total number of shares outstanding.
So ROE is, in effect, a speed limit on a firm's growth rate, which is why money managers rely on it to gauge growth potential. In fact, many specify 15% as their minimum acceptable ROE when evaluating investment candidates.
ROE Isn't Perfect
ROE is not an absolute indicator of investment value. After all, the ratio gets a big boost whenever the value of the shareholder equity, the denominator, goes down.
If, for instance, a company takes a large write-down, the reduction in income (ROE's numerator) occurs only in the year that the expense is charged; the write-down therefore makes a more significant dent in shareholder equity (the denominator) in the following years, causing an overall rise in the ROE without any improvement in the company's operations. Having a similar effect as write-downs, share buy-backs also normally depress shareholders' equity proportionately far more than they depress earnings. As a result, buy-backs also give an artificial boost to ROE. (For related reading, see How Buybacks Warp The Price-To-Book Ratio.)
Moreover, a high ROE doesn't tell you if a company has excessive debt and is raising more of its funds through borrowing rather than issuing shares. Remember, shareholder's equity is assets less liabilities, which represent what the firm owes, including its long- and short-term debt. So, the more debt a company has, the less equity it has; and the less equity a company has, the higher its ROE ratio will be.
Suppose that two firms have the same amount of assets ($1,000) and the same net income ($120) but different levels of debt: Firm A has $500 in debt and therefore $500 in shareholder's equity ($1,000 - $500), and Firm B has $200 in debt and $800 in shareholder's equity ($1,000 - $200). Firm A shows an ROE of 24% ($120/$500) while Firm B, with less debt, shows an ROE of 15% ($120/$800). As ROE equals net income divided by the equity figure, Firm A, the higher-debt firm, shows the highest return on equity.
This company looks as though it has higher profitability when really it just has more demanding obligations to its creditors. Its higher ROE may therefore be simply a mask of future problems. For a more transparent view that helps you see through this mask, make sure you also examine the company's return on invested capital (ROIC), which reveals the extent to which debt drives returns.
Another pitfall of ROE concerns the way in which intangible assets are excluded from shareholder's equity. Generally conservative, the accounting profession normally omits a company's possession of things like trademarks, brand names, and patents from asset and equity-based calculations. As a result, shareholder equity often gets understated in relation to its value, and, in turn, ROE calculations can be misleading.
A company with no assets other than a trademark is an extreme example of a situation in which accounting's exclusion of intangibles would distort ROE. After adjusting for intangibles, the company would be left with no assets and probably no shareholder equity base. ROE measured this way would be astronomical but would offer little guidance for investors looking to gauge earnings efficiency.
Conclusion
Let's face it, no single metric can provide a perfect tool for examining fundamentals. But contrasting the five-year average ROEs within a specific industrial sector does highlight companies with competitive advantage and with a knack for delivering shareholder value.
Think of ROE as a handy tool for identifying industry leaders. A high ROE can signal unrecognized value potential, so long as you know where the ratio's numbers are coming from.
by Ben McClure
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/fundamental/03/100103.asp?partner=ntu3
It pays to invest in companies that generate profits more efficiently than their rivals. Return on equity (ROE) can help investors distinguish between companies that are profit creators and those that are profit burners. On the other hand, ROE might not necessarily tell the whole story about a company, and therefore must be used carefully.
What Is ROE?
By measuring how much earnings a company can generate from assets, ROE offers a gauge of profit-generating efficiency. ROE helps investors determine whether a company is a lean, mean profit machine or an inefficient clunker. Firms that do a good job of milking profit from their operations typically have a competitive advantage - a feature that normally translates into superior returns for investors. The relationship between the company's profit and the investor's return makes ROE a particularly valuable metric to examine.
To find companies with a competitive advantage, investors can use five-year averages of the ROEs of companies within the same industry.
ROE Calculation
A company's ROE ratio is calculated by dividing the company's net income by its shareholder equity, or book value. The formula is simple:
Net Income/Shareholders' Equity
You can find net income on the income statement, but you can also take the sum of the last four quarters worth of earnings. Shareholders equity, meanwhile, is located on the balance sheet and is simply the difference between total assets and total liabilities. Shareholder equity represents the tangible assets that have been produced by the business. Both net income and shareholder equity should cover the same period of time. (To learn more, read Breaking Down The Balance Sheet.)
How Should ROE Be Interpreted?
ROE offers a useful signal of financial success since it might indicate whether the company is growing profits without pouring new equity capital into the business. A steadily increasing ROE is a hint that management is giving shareholders more for their money, which is represented by shareholders' equity. Simply put, ROE indicates know how well management is employing the investors' capital invested in the company.
It turns out, however, that a company cannot grow earnings faster than its current ROE without raising additional cash. That is, a firm that now has a 15% ROE cannot increase its earnings faster than 15% annually without borrowing funds or selling more shares. But raising funds comes at a cost: servicing additional debt cuts into net income and selling more shares shrinks earnings per share by increasing the total number of shares outstanding.
So ROE is, in effect, a speed limit on a firm's growth rate, which is why money managers rely on it to gauge growth potential. In fact, many specify 15% as their minimum acceptable ROE when evaluating investment candidates.
ROE Isn't Perfect
ROE is not an absolute indicator of investment value. After all, the ratio gets a big boost whenever the value of the shareholder equity, the denominator, goes down.
If, for instance, a company takes a large write-down, the reduction in income (ROE's numerator) occurs only in the year that the expense is charged; the write-down therefore makes a more significant dent in shareholder equity (the denominator) in the following years, causing an overall rise in the ROE without any improvement in the company's operations. Having a similar effect as write-downs, share buy-backs also normally depress shareholders' equity proportionately far more than they depress earnings. As a result, buy-backs also give an artificial boost to ROE. (For related reading, see How Buybacks Warp The Price-To-Book Ratio.)
Moreover, a high ROE doesn't tell you if a company has excessive debt and is raising more of its funds through borrowing rather than issuing shares. Remember, shareholder's equity is assets less liabilities, which represent what the firm owes, including its long- and short-term debt. So, the more debt a company has, the less equity it has; and the less equity a company has, the higher its ROE ratio will be.
Suppose that two firms have the same amount of assets ($1,000) and the same net income ($120) but different levels of debt: Firm A has $500 in debt and therefore $500 in shareholder's equity ($1,000 - $500), and Firm B has $200 in debt and $800 in shareholder's equity ($1,000 - $200). Firm A shows an ROE of 24% ($120/$500) while Firm B, with less debt, shows an ROE of 15% ($120/$800). As ROE equals net income divided by the equity figure, Firm A, the higher-debt firm, shows the highest return on equity.
This company looks as though it has higher profitability when really it just has more demanding obligations to its creditors. Its higher ROE may therefore be simply a mask of future problems. For a more transparent view that helps you see through this mask, make sure you also examine the company's return on invested capital (ROIC), which reveals the extent to which debt drives returns.
Another pitfall of ROE concerns the way in which intangible assets are excluded from shareholder's equity. Generally conservative, the accounting profession normally omits a company's possession of things like trademarks, brand names, and patents from asset and equity-based calculations. As a result, shareholder equity often gets understated in relation to its value, and, in turn, ROE calculations can be misleading.
A company with no assets other than a trademark is an extreme example of a situation in which accounting's exclusion of intangibles would distort ROE. After adjusting for intangibles, the company would be left with no assets and probably no shareholder equity base. ROE measured this way would be astronomical but would offer little guidance for investors looking to gauge earnings efficiency.
Conclusion
Let's face it, no single metric can provide a perfect tool for examining fundamentals. But contrasting the five-year average ROEs within a specific industrial sector does highlight companies with competitive advantage and with a knack for delivering shareholder value.
Think of ROE as a handy tool for identifying industry leaders. A high ROE can signal unrecognized value potential, so long as you know where the ratio's numbers are coming from.
by Ben McClure
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/fundamental/03/100103.asp?partner=ntu3
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