Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of February 18, 2015

Article Excerpt

When you let “theme investing” play a role in an investment decision, weigh your decision carefully before you act. Make sure you have other reasons to buy. After all, a powerful investing theme can overwhelm your judgment. It can lead you to buy stocks that have little genuine appeal. For example, the most powerful investing theme of the past few decades was the Internet stock mania. By the second half of the 1990s, it was clear that the web was going to have a huge impact on the economy and the world, and was going to create vast fortunes. Those assumptions were absolutely accurate. However, it’s easy to set up a company with an Internet-based business. It’s much harder hard to create a profit-making company, regardless of a link to a fashionable investing theme. That’s why unsuccessful Internet-based stock promotions vastly outnumbered the pioneering Internet stocks that prospered. It’s why most Internet speculations turned out to be terrible investments. It’s easier to profit…