Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of November 3, 2015

Article Excerpt

Investing guidelines and rules of thumb can help you make better investment decisions. But to profit most from any one guideline, you need to understand why it works. That way, you can determine if the rule makes sense in a particular situation. For example, our rule on new stock issues or IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) is simple. We generally stay out of them. That’s because new stock issues come to market when it’s a good time for the company or its insiders to sell. That may not be a good time for you to buy. In fact, it’s often a bad time for you to buy, judging by academic studies of new-issue performance. In addition, brokers reserve their best new issues for their biggest and most co-operative clients—those who do a lot of trading, or who buy every new issue the broker offers them. If you rarely buy new issues, you will rarely if ever be able to buy a significant portion…