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17 tips for more successful investing – MoneySense

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Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash

What is the most important thing to keep in mind as an investor? This is a question one of my students asked the late Walter Schloss, a legendary value investor, a few years ago when he talked to my value-investing students at the Ivey Business School. His reply was “do not lose money.”

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Schloss argued that once you lose money it might be difficult to recover. For example, if you go down by 50%, you must then go up by 100% to break even.

Unlike other investors, value investors place a greater emphasis in avoiding losses than making money. In the words of Aristotle, “the aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but avoid pain.” 

The following checklist, adapted from Walter Schloss’ writings, helps investors avoid losing money, and will go a long way towards achieving financial success.

  1. Before investing, try to determine the value of a stock. A share of a stock represents part of a business; it is not just a piece of paper. Since buying a stock is tantamount to buying a piece of the company, one therefore needs to understand a lot about the company.
  2. Compare price to value. How far below value is the stock trading at? That is, is there a margin of safety?
  3. Examine the quality of the balance sheet. Be sure that the company is not over-leveraged in relation to the norm in the industry. If it is, you may risk permanent loss of capital.
  4. Have patience and a long-term perspective.
  5. Do not buy on tips and never make impulsive decisions. Do your own homework first and be independent; everyone has a conflict. It is your job to watch your back, no one else’s.  
  6. Do not sell on bad news as this information tends to be already reflected in the price and, especially, because markets tend to overreact on the downside (also on the upside).
  7. Do not be afraid to be a loner and a contrarian, but always look for weaknesses in your thinking. 
  8. Have confidence in your judgment, especially in the face of resistance and criticism, once you have made a decision.
  9. Have an investing philosophy and an analytical process of when to buy and when to sell a stock, and try to follow it with patience and discipline.
  10. Before selling, try to re-evaluate the company given current information. The level of the stock market, the direction of interest rates, changes in P/E ratios and pessimism or exuberance by market participants should be factored into your analysis.
  11. When buying a deep value stock, try to buy at the low of the past few years. This is because a stock may go to $100 and then decline to $50, which one may find attractive as an entry point. But what if, a few years ago, the stock changed hands for $10? This shows that there is some vulnerability in a decision to buy at $50.
  12. Better to buy assets at a discount than to buy earnings. It is easier to find deep value stocks and identify/expect a catalyst than to understand whether the company has a franchise and whether the franchise is sustainable. Besides, earnings can change dramatically in the short run, whereas assets change slowly. One has to know a lot more about the company if one buys based on earnings.
  13. Listen to advice from people you respect, and examine what they do. This doesn’t mean you have to accept their advice or do what they do. While you need collateral evidence to support your own thinking, listening to people you respect helps solidify your thinking.
  14. Do not to let your emotions affect your decisions. The worst enemy in investing is usually within yourself. Fear, greed, impatience and lack of discipline are weaknesses of human nature and emotions that work against success in investing.
  15. Stay invested to take advantage of compounding. If you make 12% a year and stay invested, you’ll double your money in six years. 
  16. Stocks are better compounders than bonds. Bonds have limited upside; inflation erodes the value of bonds and reduces your purchasing power.
  17. Beware of leverage. Risk is not volatility, but the probability of permanent loss of capital. Investing using leverage may result in a permanent loss of capital as you may be forced to sell at a time you did not wish to do so.

These rules worked marvels for Walter Schloss. Over a 49-year period of managing money, there were only two years during which he lost money, and he beat the market by 5%. The rules can work for you, too—but are you disciplined enough to follow this checklist? The answer to this question will determine how successful an investor you will end up being.

George Athanassakos is a professor of finance and holds the Ben Graham Chair in Value Investing at the Richard Ivey School of Business, Western University in London, Ont. Also director of the university’s Ben Graham Centre for Value Investing, Dr. Athanassakos is offering a highly sought-after five-day seminar on Value Investing and the Search for Value, in Toronto, July 27–31, 2020. For more information, visit https://www.ivey.uwo.ca/bengrahaminvesting/events/seminars/.

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Businesses want outstanding ‘green’ investment tax credits fast-tracked

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TORONTO — A survey by KPMG in Canada says business leaders want Ottawa to fast-track all outstanding “green” or “clean” economy business investment tax credits.

The online survey of 534 small- and medium-sized businesses done in February says 90 per cent of those questioned supported speeding up the delivery of the promised incentives.

KPMG’s Lucy Iacovelli says meeting the climate challenges and retooling the economy requires significant business investment to decarbonize and build the net-zero industries and technologies.

To deliver, Iacovelli says Ottawa needs to make it fast and easy for companies to access the clean energy investment tax credits or they risk falling further behind U.S. and other major economies.

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The survey found 83 per cent of the businesses say they require more assistance and incentives to decarbonize.

Eighty per cent of those surveyed also supported federal green-related investments or incentives to attract foreign companies to locate in Canada.

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Four of investors’ top 5 favorite investment destinations are in Europe, Milken Institute report shows

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Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York.

Four of investors’ top five favorite destinations are in Europe, according to the Milken Institute’s Global Opportunity Index (GOI) report.

Denmark topped this year’s rankings, scoring first on business perception, a measure of the ease of doing business in a country as well as other regulatory metrics.

The index factors in 100 indicators under five categories: business perception, economic fundamentals, financial services, institutional framework, and international standards and policy.

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Denmark ranked third on economic fundamentals which capture macroeconomic performance, workforce talent, and “efforts to create a resilient and sustainable economy and society,” according to the report.

These are the top five countries that investors find attractive, according to the latest GOI report:

  1. Denmark
  2. Sweden
  3. Finland
  4. United States
  5. United Kingdom

The U.S. moved up one spot to the fourth position this year, ranking highest in the institutional framework category, which tracks the protection a country’s institutions offer to investors’ rights and their assets.

The country ranked fifth in the financial services category, which evaluates the overall financial system in a nation as well as the accessibility to finance.

Finland which placed third overall, was ranked highest in the international standards and policy category that evaluates economic openness and the extent to which a country’s policies are aligned with global regulatory and intellectual property protection standards.

Emerging and developing Asia performed well compared to other E&D regions, drawing more than half (53.2%) of the funds flowing into E&D countries between 2018 and 2022, according to the report.

“While advanced economies provide stability, investors seeking high-growth returns continue to show interest in emerging and developing economies,” Maggie Switek, Senior Director of the research department at The Milken Institute, said in a statement.

Among Asian E&D economies, Malaysia emerged as investors’ favorite and ranked 27th globally.

It has the “best investment conditions” among all E&D economies, and ranks well on institutional frameworks, partially due to the fact that the country “has very strong investors’ rights,” Switek said.

Malaysia is also now the sixth largest chip exporter in the world and packages 23% of all U.S. chips, according to The New York Times.

Overall, E&D regions “offer attractive opportunities to investors interested in emerging markets with favorable growth potential,” the report said.

Rising tensions between the U.S. and China, however, have hit inflows to Asian E&D economies, down 75.4% in 2022, the report added.

The world’s second-largest economy, China, came in at 39th place. “That’s actually pretty high,” Switek told CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia, adding it is still an emerging and developing Asian economy according to the IMF.

“While China attracted more than half of total capital inflows to E&D Asia between 2018 and 2022, its appeal to investors appears to have decreased recently, likely due to rising geopolitical tensions with the US,” the report said.

Here are the top 10 E&D Asian countries on the Global Opportunity Index:

  1. Malaysia
  2. Thailand
  3. China
  4. Indonesia
  5. Vietnam
  6. India
  7. Mongolia
  8. Sri Lanka
  9. Philippines
  10. Cambodia

Singapore topped Asia as investors’ favorite country in the region, and grabbed the 14th place globally. Hong Kong and Japan ranked 15th and 16th, respectively, in Asia.

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A Once-in-a-Generation Investment Opportunity: 1 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Growth Stock to Buy Now and Hold Forever

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There’s no denying the continuing buzz surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). The technology first attracted public interest early last year for its ability to create original content and automate a growing number of time-consuming and mundane tasks, thereby making workers more productive.

In the company’s 2023 shareholder letter, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella addressed this paradigm shift, saying, “This next generation of AI will reshape every software category and every business, including our own.”

While that might sound like hyperbole, there’s a growing body of evidence that suggests that the process has already begun. And while estimates vary wildly, the potential economic impact is eye-opening. Generative AI could be worth between $2.6 trillion and $4.4 trillion annually, according to global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Companies at the leading edge of this trend will participate in this potential windfall, as will their shareholders.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft is one such company already innovating in the era of AI.

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A hologram with various AI icons in a display above a laptop while a person types.
Image source: Getty Images.

Microsoft is my Copilot

AI has been around for decades, but the abilities of generative AI take that up a notch. The most in-demand use cases (right now) include outlining data; creating original images, text, and music; summarizing and drafting email responses; creating presentations with a few prompts; and drafting and debugging computer code. And new and intriguing use cases continue to join the fold.

Microsoft jump-started its creation of generative AI tools with a strategic partnership and stake in ChatGPT creator OpenAI, a move that now seems prescient. Microsoft quickly found ways to integrate AI across a broad cross-section of its most widely used products, making them even more useful.

The crown jewel of these efforts is Copilot, Microsoft’s AI-powered helper. What some investors may not realize is that Copilot isn’t just one, but a growing suite of job-specific digital assistants that are automating an increasing number of menial tasks. The flagship version, Copilot for Microsoft 365, helps users of the company’s productivity software become even more effective.

Last month, Microsoft released Copilot for Service and Copilot for Sales, offering “role-specific insights and actions to streamline business processes, automate repetitive tasks, and unlock creativity.” The company was quick to point out that these versions also integrate with the most widely used contact center and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, including ServiceNow and Salesforce.

The company is currently testing Copilot for Finance, which helps review financial transactions and data for irregularities, create financial reports from the data, and use the information to generate presentations.

The initial evidence suggests this strategy has been wildly successful. A survey of early users found:

  • 70% of Copilot users admitted to being more productive.
  • 68% said their work quality improved.
  • 64% spent less time dealing with email.
  • 85% reported faster first drafts.
  • 75% said Copilot helped them find digital files faster.

Perhaps most telling was that 77% of respondents said once they started using Copilot, they didn’t want to stop.

The evidence suggests that Microsoft has only just begun to unleash the vast potential of its AI-powered assistant, which could potentially generate billions of dollars in incremental revenue. Just last week, Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne updated his estimates, suggesting Microsoft’s generative AI efforts could produce incremental revenue of $143 billion by 2027. For context, Microsoft had total revenue of $212 billion in fiscal 2023 (ended Jun. 30, 2023), suggesting a potential revenue boost of as much as 67% over four years.

To be clear, plenty would have to go right for Microsoft to achieve this lofty benchmark, but it helps illustrate the magnitude of the opportunity.

Grabbing cloud market share

Recent results suggest that AI is also having a halo effect on Microsoft Azure, the company’s cloud infrastructure business.

In its fiscal 2024 second quarter (ended Dec. 31, 2023), Microsoft revealed that cloud services revenue climbed 30% year over year — faster than both Alphabet‘s Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS), which grew 26% and 13%, respectively. Microsoft revealed that six percentage points of that growth was driven by demand for AI services. That was up from 29% growth in the previous quarter, which got a three percentage point-boost from AI.

This suggests that not only is Copilot a runaway hit, but it’s also luring customers to Microsoft’s cloud platform

A compelling opportunity

Microsoft stock has jumped 74% since the beginning of last year, more than double the gains of the S&P 500. That isn’t an anomaly either, as the stock has surged 985% over the past decade, far outpacing the 177% gains of the broader market.

Despite its distinguished track record, Microsoft stock is still relatively inexpensive, selling 35 times forward earnings and 11 times next year’s sales. While that represents a slight premium to the overall market, the magnitude of the opportunity represented by cloud computing, AI, and Copilot shows why Microsoft is worthy of a premium.

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Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Danny Vena has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, and ServiceNow. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

 

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