Stock Philosophy – Finding a Formula

Article Excerpt

Every investor would like to find a fits-on-a-T shirt formula or stock philosophy for deciding when to buy or sell. It would make investing life so much simpler. In my experience, however, these formulas and the solutions they give you never provide dependable guidance. Sometimes a stock philosophy will work and other times it will not. The outcome of applying a stock philosophy or formula in any single instance is largely a matter of chance. The problem is that you are looking for a number that falls on a one-dimensional scale, with ‘buy’ at one end and ‘sell’ at the other. To make intelligent decisions, however, you have to look at a variety of factors that sit on a variety of scales. You could rate some crucial factors on scales that have ‘heavily leveraged’ at one end and ‘highly liquid’ at the other ‘geographically diversified’ at one end and ‘geographically focused’ at the other ’competes on price’ and ‘competes through…