More than 200 years of research shows that owning stocks, which represent an ownership stake in a business, is the best way to generate long-term wealth. Our stock investing guides will explain how common stocks work, what preferred stocks are, how to understand dividends, stock basics for new investors, and advanced stock trading techniques for those who are ready to learn the deep knowledge of finance.
Years ago, I vaguely remember hearing someone comment that it was interesting how differently we measure wealth today compared to British society at the end of the 19th century. This made me realize that most people don’t even know there is a difference; that there are primarily two ways you can think about measuring your wealth and which you choose for your own household will influence how you behave, the capital structure you employ, and even how you think about risk.
In 1928, Irving Fisher published The Money Illusion (seriously, buy it – it’s only $7.95), which discussed the human fallacy of thinking about things in the nominal currency of your home country instead of in terms of purchasing power. The concept phrase “money illusion” was coined by legendary investor and economist John Maynard Keynes. The…
I’ve been writing quite a bit about dividends and dividend investing over at Investing for Beginners at About.com. One of the things I wanted to explain, but I feel is still advanced for that particular readership base, is something known as the dividend discount model, or rather a back-of-the-envelope adaptation of it. (Please note that…
You all know that Peter Lynch was the first investor that made the stock market make sense to me during childhood. He is one of the greatest investors of all time, having compounded the mutual fund he ran for 13 years at 20%+ annually, generating an absolute return of more than 1,000% for his…
A family member of mine has a daughter who is selling Girl Scout cookies. To help, I decided to buy half-a-dozen boxes of cookies. That led me down a research path to figure out who, exactly was making money from baking those treats.
Four Companies Control 94.8% Market Share of the Domestic Cigarette Industry in the United States On this blog, in my articles, and even in my books, I have often used the example of how capital allocation determines the wealth one ultimately has. Many times, I used the illustration of a married couple, both of whom…
Due to our disciplined value investing philosophy, coupled with our insistence upon diversification of income and assets, we haven’t experienced a lot of big losses. When we do, we try and study what went wrong so we can understand if there was a structural problem or a blind spot in our mental cognition that should be avoided in the future. We never want to have to “return to Go” in Monopoly terms. That is just intelligent portfolio management.
When I was a senior in high school, I bought my youngest sister a single share of Coca-Cola common stock for her 6th birthday. It’s been a teaching mechanism throughout her life; one that is far more important and beneficial from an academic and educational standpoint than any investment return it could generate.
How My Grandpa Dennis Could Have Turned His Pepsi Habit Into a 7-Figure Estate I’ve written in the past about how nearly every American alive today has been confronted with perhaps a dozen different companies that they knew first hand because they enjoyed using the firm’s products for years (in some cases, their whole life)…
I love Apple’s products and what Apple has accomplished over the past few years. However, it is amazing to see how little even journalists understand the way companies or valued or how to properly compare the total return generated by one business over a given period of time to another business.
