What do investors and farmers have in common? Their work is dominated by cycles. A farmer who does not understand cycles — the ebb and flow of the seasons, a time to plant, a time to harvest, and a time to let the ground lay fallow — will not remain a farmer for long. Investors, too, have much to gain from understanding cycles (and much to lose from ignoring them). That is why we’ll talk more about cycles in the
Read nowOver the past year, multiple Silicon Valley “unicorns” — companies privately valued in the billions, or even tens of billions — came to market via initial public offerings (IPOs). Investors seemed enthusiastic, scooping up the shares of these loss-making companies no matter how much cash they burned. WeWork appeared to be the worst of them all; we wrote about the company on Aug. 23, describing how it summed up “everything bad about the Silicon Valley unicorn bubble.” Now it looks
Read nowCall it narcissism, or call it knowing exactly what you like — either way, today’s consumers crave products that fit nicely into personal preference buckets. These may be functional, ideological, or taste-based, pick your poison. To demonstrate, take a look at LikeFolio trend data on consumer demand for “personalized” and “just for me” products… As advertisers amp up their targeting game and search gets smarter, the new expectation is for brands and products to know the consumer and pitch products
Read nowPrime Day has turned into the ecommerce version of “Christmas in July,” with discounts and deals as far as the eye can see. As shoppers log in and click their way to big savings, LikeFolio got busy analyzing consumer behavior to find out which retailers and device makers benefitted the most. Prime Day 2019 Sets Revenue Records Amazon reported that Prime Day 2019 was “the largest shopping event in its history,” citing sales surmounting 2018’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Read nowThe way to build wealth in markets is to do things that are smart and safe. If you develop a playbook of smart and safe investing decisions, you can return to that playbook over and over again. The repeat application of smart and safe habits is a wealth-accumulation process. It’s valuable to create a process like this and then stick with it for years, or even decades, on the path to your long-term goals. Emphasizing “smart and safe” sounds obvious
Read nowThere is a global meat shortage going on. Today we’ll cover two strong investment ideas, as this is part of a powerful trend that could shape agricultural markets for years. A meat shortage might sound funny, but the impacts are deadly serious. The shortage has already become a worst case scenario for China. If the problem is contained within China, that is one thing. If it spreads to other continents and countries, we could have “porkageddon” on our hands. The
Read nowFor years, we have tracked the performance of a “Billionaire’s Club” of the world’s best investors. Through quarterly filings, we are able to see when these investors buy and sell and compare their results to how they might fare using TradeStops. What we have found is that, in most cases, the performance of these top investors could be improved, sometimes dramatically improved, by using TradeStops to manage their portfolios. Our software helps make the best even better! In the past,
Read nowWe know that certain bad habits are hazardous to your health. And many know that cognitive biases — irrational tendencies built into the brain that lead to poor judgment — can be hazardous to your wealth. Over the past six decades or so, dozens of cognitive biases have been identified. One of the oldest and most dangerous of these is “confirmation bias.” There is no way to calculate the total amount, but it’s safe to say veritable oceans of investor
Read nowAs a TradeStops member, you know our mantra is to always have an exit strategy. One powerful exit strategy is to focus on the overall state of your portfolio by using the Portfolio Volatility Quotient (PVQ) Analyzer tool. If you have a long-term portfolio that’s sitting on large unrealized gains, it can be difficult to monitor the historical high-water mark — and hence a true picture of the portfolio’s health. Here’s a solution we touched on in last week’s webinar
Read nowGreat decisions tend to look easy in hindsight. Through the lens of history, a hugely successful call — like starting a company that changes the world, for example — appears to be an obvious move. But big decisions always look easier after they’ve worked out. Making the call in the moment can be tough. There is a useful mental technique that applies here — a probability technique — that Jeff Bezos used to make his big call on starting Amazon.
Read nowBack in November 2016, TradeSmith wrote about investors who double up on their losers. He thought it made more sense to double up on your winners, which was an idea he wanted to explore for a long time. He asked our research team to look at an approach that uses the Volatility Quotient (VQ) to determine when it made sense to double up on winning trades. “When is a good time to add to a winning position?” The answer we came up with
Read nowIn an earlier probability series, we wrote about the medical doctor who beat roulette. The lesson was that, if you can learn how to “put the odds in your favor” — to make use of probability, in other words — you can possibly find ways to consistently win where others lose. And while investing is not a “game of chance” like roulette, the discipline of investing is very much about probability (though a lot of investors don’t realize it). Probability
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