| Shoshanah Port
|
| Over the past year, yours truly has spent a great deal of time studying the mysterious beast called the Stock Market. The Common Wisdom is that the Market is far too complex and difficult to comprehend for the Little Folk, such as myself (although the scale in my bathroom is highly resistant to descriptions of myself containing the word "little"). The poor and huddled masses are advised by the big and Wise men on Wall Street that if we have the audacity to try to manage our OWN financial destiny, we are doomed to burn our hard earned savings faster than a joint at a Grateful Dead concert. |
| What a load of crap. |
| The folks at the Motley Fool have made millions for themselves by pursuing the noble gesture of enlightening the masses to the startling truth that Average Joel can beat roughly 85% of managed mutual funds without spending any extra effort and by spending less money. Check out the Vanguard 500 S&P Index Fund, it's the way how! But for those of us daring souls who want to play with the market as well as make money, there is Foolish Investing. |
| Foolish investors take the emotion out of investing. Using statistical & earnings information about companies from reliable sources, one is able to "calculate" which stocks should be purchased. My boyfriend spends all of his free time testing some of these "stock screens" back through time. So far, they seem to beat the pants off the market. |
| My personal portfolio consists of a combination of S&P depository receipts (like the S&P 500 index fund except trades like a stock!) and securities picked by using a stock screening method. Basically, we take all the stocks that the Valueline Investment Survey ranks of "Timeliness=1" (i.e. most likely to go up in price) and rank them by 13 week return. Drop the #1 stock, since it only has one direction to go (down) and buy the next five. I'm currently testing a permutation of this method, which is designed to help signal when to sell before the stock drops out of the top six (and hence loses money). I'll post the results when I have them. Meanwhile, here's how I've been doing.... |
| Visit the Fool to see the latest on my holdings. |