The Bull Hunters Guide

Greetings! We appreciate you returning to find out more about gold and how it makes for great investment potential.

Now that we’ve reached the end of this series, you’re going to find out some of the different ways you can purchase this metal and make it a part of your investment portfolio.

Methods Of Investing In Gold

While gold maintains intrinsic qualities that preserve its value between different countries and economies, it nonetheless presents the challenge of choosing how to invest in it.

Hundreds of years ago, investing in gold simply meant few options for traders, merchants, and rulers wanting to maintain wealth. There was only so many forms of it and ways to handle a raw metal.

Nowadays, with the emergence of new technologies, businesses, and models of transaction, there are plenty of ways in which to invest in gold.

Gold Bullion

The most basic example of how to invest in gold is to purchase gold bullion. These bars are of the highest value, and represent the most basic way available today in which to add the strength of gold to your portfolio without fuss or hassle.

However, gold bullion is expensive and requires that you carefully consider its value in relation to the currency you’re dealing with before making the plunge.

Companies and Mutual Funds

Of course, there are other modern ways of investing in gold. You can choose to invest in a gold company or a mutual fund, which can present a great way to gain the value of gold in relation to market performance.

However, if you’re concerns lie with holding physical property, then buying shares in company stock or promises may not be the answer you’re looking for. Gold products represent the real deal, and give you solid material that is exactly what you need when you want to secure value.

Altogether, gold is a great asset for any investor looking to make a strong and dependable portfolio. However, just like anything else, it’s a single commodity, and as such, it should be treated as one of many potential investment options, not as a single answer.

Just like the old saying goes, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. This is just as true regarding gold as it is regarding anything else you can put your money towards. I hope you have enjoyed this series on investing in gold, we will return next week with a new series on successful investment solutions and advice.

Sean Rasmussen
The Bullhunters Guide
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2009

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Lately in this blog, we’ve been talking a lot about stock picking strategies. When you get right down to it, the whole essence of investing in the stock market boils down to being able to pick the right stocks at the right time. This is largely a matter based on “luck”, but that doesn’t stop people from trying to devise systems to make it more comprehensible and certain. And some of those systems, as we’ve seen, actually do make a lot of sense.

Handling Your Investments

Starting with this entry, though, we’re going to shift gears a little bit. We’re going to begin taking a more in-depth look at topics related to how to handle your investments once you’ve actually identified the stocks that you care to put your hard-earned money into.

The first of these techniques that we’re going to explore is known as short-selling. If you’ve been investing for a while, then there were probably a few occasions on which you just knew that a stock was about to collapse under its own weight. Maybe you wondered if it was possible to profit off of a situation like that, increasing the value of your portfolio substantially, even during a bear market?

Short Selling Is The Answer

Well, it’s entirely possible. What’s more, it’s something that is done every single day on the market by confident traders who know how to make the most of a “bad” situation. What makes it possible is short-selling.

Short selling works almost the complete opposite of a typical investment. When most people buy stocks, they try to buy at a low price, and then hold onto their investments as their value grows over a period of time. Once the value has risen, they sell their investments (hopefully for a profit). Short selling, however, is when your purchased stock earns you money only when its value goes DOWN!

How does it all work? We’ll take an in-depth look next time.

See you next week for part 2 of Short Selling.

Sean Rasmussen
The Bullhunters Guide
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2008

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Last time in this blog, we began to discuss the CANSLIM method of choosing stocks. Something of a complex system for choosing, CANSLIM involves the study of 7 different criteria in an attempt to pick stocks that are most likely to generate profits for the investors. It differs from other systems in that it doesn’t depend very much on forecasting an uncertain future, but rather on the objective analysis of the current status of a stock. That’s why it has to cover so many variables, and consequently, why we needed to split it up over two entries!

Last time, we mentioned that CANSLIM has to take into consideration the current and annual earnings of a stock, as well as how the company is adapting and making changes in the marketplace, whether it be in terms of new management, new products, or just new policies on how they will conduct business. That covers the CAN part.

Supply, Demand and Leader

The S in CANSLIM stands for “Supply and Demand”. This is a very basic rule of economics that applies to all economic markets and should be very well understood by all investors, even beginning ones. How supply and demand relates to CANSLIM is that CANSLIM strategies hold that, overall, it’s easier for smaller companies to show greater profits. This is because larger companies require a greater demand in order to push the kind of supply that should show huge profits.

The L in CANSLIM stands for “Leader or Laggard”. This refers to the fact that a CANSLIM strategist asserts that one should look at the difference between those companies that lead the market and those that lag behind. Investors are always looking for the next big thing, which is just another way of saying that they’re looking for those companies that lead the market. In order to determine this, one should look for stocks that perform better than 75% of their competitors in the same industry.

Institutional Sponsorship and Market direction

The I in CANSLIM stands for “Institutional Sponsorship”. This means that a CANSLIM strategist looks for companies that demonstrate some kind of sponsorship from important and well-backed institutions. This is generally a sign that an industry has faith in a company, and that it’s going to be around, generating profits for the long haul.

The M stands for “Market Direction”. This means that a CANSLIM strategist must look not only at the stock in question, but at the entirety of the market in question. Whether or not the market as a whole is moving up or down has a big effect on the profitability of a stock. Even if all the other six factors seem sound, the company will probably not succeed and generate profits in a failing market.

Phew. That’s it for CANSLIM. Next time, we’ll continue our look at the most popular stock picking strategies out there. We’re nearly at the end, folks! Until then, happy trading!

See you next week for part 9 of Stock Picking Strategies.

Sean Rasmussen
The Bullhunters Guide
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2008

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This continues our series of in-depth looks at the different strategies that are commonly employed by big name investors when they go to choose the stocks that they’re going to invest their hard earned money into. In fact, though it’s the case that everyone out there seems to have their own system for doing things, there are a fairly set number of strategies that seem to pop up over and over again. It’s these that we’ve been examining, as we feel they’re the most noteworthy.

CANSLIM

Having discussed all the basic and secondary strategies already, we’re going to move on to a stock picking strategy that represents something of a modern hybrid of picking techniques. It’s known as CANSLIM, and the whole idea is that it allows one to pay attention to a lot of different objective factors at the same time (seven to be exact) in an attempt to pick a stock without relying on subjective forecasts of future values that might not end up holding water.

Because it’s such a complex strategy, we’re going to cover it in two separate blog entries. Three of the aspects will be covered this time, and four next time, finishing it up.

What Does CANSLIM Stand For?

First off, the C in CANSLIM stands for “Current Earnings”. This is meant to indicate that you need to look at whether or not a stock’s earnings per share have risen on a consistent yearly basis. Generally speaking, if a stock’s earnings per share are continuing to increase over a period of a year, it’s said to be in good condition as far as this criteria is concerned.

The A stands for “Annual Earnings”. This indicates that one should look at whether or not a company has shown a good consistent growth over a period of years. Clearly, this implies that companies with a history of at least a few years tend to be in better standing in the CANSLIM method. However, there’s something of an exception…

The N stands for “New”. This means that CANSLIM strategists tend to look for companies that are offering something new. Because they also look for consistent growth over a long history, this means that they usually seek out old companies that are undergoing changes that alter the way that they do business. This could be anything from new management, to a new product line.

Next time, we’ll cover the other four aspects of CANSLIM.

See you next week for part 8 of Stock Picking Strategies.

Sean Rasmussen
The Bullhunters Guide
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2008

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Recently, we’ve been discussing a host of stock picking strategies and looking at the applications of each. We’ve dealt with underlying fundamentals such as fundamental analysis, and qualitative analysis, as well as the two immediate offshoots from those: growth investing and value investing. We’ve even looked at a more modern methodology that comprises a fusion of both growth and value investing: GARP investing.

Income Investing

This week, however, we’re going to look at an investment strategy that is arguably the most straightforward of them all. In that the end goal of investing is to ultimately turn a profit and generate income, the stated goal of income investing is right in line with that: to pick the stocks that will provide the most steady income.

This runs counter to what many investors think about income. Typically, they view investments like stocks as being a risk with little to no guarantees outside of certain option spreads. For steady, secure income they look to more traditional alternatives like savings bonds. However, when we’re looking at stocks that pay out dividends, it’s certainly possible to draw a good steady income, just from one’s stocks.

Income investors usually tend to invest in those stocks that are tied to older, established businesses, rather than trying to find the next big thing. The reason for this strategy is that these companies have a very solid foundation in the marketplace and “aren’t going anywhere”. They have no real need to reinvest their earnings into themselves, so very often they tend to pay them out to their shareholders in the form of annual dividends.

The Highest Dividends

However, it isn’t just about picking those companies that pay out the highest yearly dividends. Good income investors will also look at a figure called the dividend yield, which is calculated by dividing the annual dividend paid per share by the price of the share itself. This will give one a percentage figure that determines the dividend yield. Typically, income investors look for a high dividend yield no matter what the actual numbers are – a figure somewhere around 5-8% seems to be the sweet spot that most are looking for.

In the end, income investing can be boiled down to the following summary: finding companies with good, high dividend yields that will allow the investors to receive a steady income in dividends over time without much concern for growth or undervaluing or any of the other principles that make up the other popular strategies.

See you next week for part 7 of Stock Picking Strategies.

Sean Rasmussen
The Bullhunters Guide
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2008

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