Twist your brain around supporting evil for the good of humanity. Or not.

“Smoking is cool, and everybody knows it.” –Chandler Bing (Friends)

So the idea of this blog is to talk about how to make a sustainable nest egg for safety and retirement, without (too much) guilt.

So, why are we here, we who have a list of rules (one of which is “Don’t buy defense contractor and tobacco stocks”) going to make the argument that we should buy tobacco stocks?

Well, lets think about it … money? Yeah, sure, of course. I mean, why invest in stocks if you aren’t going to make money. But, we here always have a secondary objective: Doing good, or, at least not doing (too) bad.

We have morals! We have ideals! And where we may not always live up to the ideals, we at least feel bad when we don’t abide by them. So, we don’t support companies that make things that purposefully kill, exploit or support killing or supporting … even when we don’t know what that means. [Does buying stock in alternative energy from a company that supplies energy to a factory that makes bombs that are used to shell civilians 6000 miles away constitute supporting building and dropping bombs? And if so, or not, does simply paying taxes support that too, thus making the whole thing moot?]

Certainly there are shades of gray  to buying any stock. In a gray fog, while wearing sunglasses.  At night. Underground.  With the Beatles playing (cause it sounds like a psychedelic party!)

So, let’s just set up a set of rules. Actually, 2 cop outs, and 2 rules. No, well, making money is one of the rules, so 3 rules. But, 2 besides that.

Forget it. Lets just focus on the rules:

1) (cop out) Business sucks. But it’s the best thing we have ever found to channel the selfish human heart into constructive gains. Businesses employ people, who support families. They pay (lots) of taxes (or, their employees pay lots of taxes, either way, the government gets more so they are happy). Generally, they pay for everything and move money around. They are the heart of the world. (Roads are arteries and veins. Money is blood. People are cells. Dogs are leukocytes. Food is, well, food. Movie stars are the moles and freckles. Manteca, Ca., is the anus, Etc.)

2) (cop out) In planes with sudden loss of pressure, parents are told to put on their masks first, get some oxygen, and then take care of their children. Like that, we need to take care of our bottom line, so we can continue to fight the good fight. (BTW, this is good justification for taking an evening off from your kids. And just may be true, also.)

3) Avoid bad (self explanatory, but hard to define)

4) But above all, support good.

So, what does this all mean. It is sound and fury signifying nothing, but we’re calling it our “Guiding principals”. (Hey, we want at least the illusion of doing good. It’s working just so long as we believe it, right? ‘Cause, lets be honest, just being alive and breathing is f***ing things up, and it just gets worse from there.)

So, cigarettes kill people. Don’t support that. But, as an alternative, e-cigarettes have lower the risk of cancer and lung disease. So support that.

But, doesn’t supporting e-cigarettes support the tobacco industry?

Yes, it does. So, how can we invest in this? I mean, we are hooking people on nicotine, either way, right? Er … yes.

But, lets look at our algorithm here (you just learned a fancy word for recipe):

Rules one and two: Check!

Rules four: Check!

Rule three:<buzzer sound> Not so much.

But, FIGHTING the big EVIL corporations can be done by methods other than destroying them, but by redirecting their evil ambition towards less evil, but more profitable business ventures. If we are supporting something bad, but steering it towards something good, then we’re doing good, right? Like Michael Corleone in the Godfather, trying to go legit. Or, like an undercover drug operative. Or like James Bond!

No matter how you spin it to yourself, the truth is, is that if the stock price goes up (more people are buying it) then the more tobacco companies will pay more attention to e-cigs. This will decrease the production of regular cigarettes, which, lets face it, stink.

Or, maybe we are just trying to talk ourselves into something stupid.

Look at the stock: Victory Electronic Cigarette Incorporated (OTCBB [Over the Counter Bulletin Board]: ECIG) (These wacky stock brokers! HA HA HA).

It is all over the place, highly volatile. The FDA is cracking down (not really, but hey, when the Wall Street Journal hypes something …) the prices are just going to plummet.

But, as you know, we advocate buying things when they get bad press. And we believe this industry will grow by leaps and bounds over the next few years. And this company is just starting out …

Could it be the next Starbucks? The next Netflix?

Probably not, but, heck, it’s stocks. 99% of new companies fail.

Bottom line: It may not hurt you to invest a small portion of your portfolio on this, like say, $1000. Or, it may cost you $1000 and your soul. We aren’t quite sure.

 

NOTE: StockGuilt is a blog about interesting stocks, and our views. We are not stock brokers, investment councilors, planners or legal advisers. In fact, at least one of us is an idiot. The rest are just folks who think about investments. This is what we think, and what we will do/did. In no way are we telling your what to buy or sell … Do your own homework.

If it works out for you, and you feel generous, well, we’ll probably get in trouble if we take your money, so …  We like Ronald McDonald house, Unicef, Salvation Army and SafeNest. 

 

 

 

Invest in fun s***, and tap dance on hard-work’s face.

Here is a secret: If you are having fun, you never have to work hard. Or, to put it another way, if you are having fun, working hard is not an ordeal — it can even be a rewarding, enjoyable way to spend your time.

This goes for:

• Work, work: Work for yourself; work at Pixar; work doing what you love …
• Exercise: Tramplines, sports (basket ball, soccer), paint ball, rock climbing .. .
• Other boring, annoying, scary, tiresome, awful, painful and/or smelly stuff: E.g., Raising children.

Examples of hard work being fun:

• Sex (although, I bet you had already figured this one out)
• Showering (stop and think about how much work you do in there! I bet you never noticed, as it feels so nice).
• Games/puzzles …
• Misc. (i.e., punching a pillow, chewing gum or running from small woodland animals while drinking Boons Strawberry Hill with your friends in the woods).

One of the secrets in this life is to learn basic life-hacks, such as the example above, and creatively, (and actively) apply them to other areas of your life. So how do we apply this “fun can distract from annoying/tiring/painful work” theory to investments?

Here is a list of five things you can do to make investing fun:

1)  Invest with friends: Get a group of people together, pool your money, and buy lots of stocks. Advantages of this route include: diverse knowledge and fresh leads; lowered fees, due to buying in bulk, and splitting the costs; more brains working on the problem; rapid diversification; it can be an excuse to get together and have fun!

2) Invest with your kids: Have your kids help you invest, and teach them a valuable skill at the same time.

3) Play “fantasy investing” (i.e., paper trading or paper investing). Get a bunch of fantasy football addicts, ante up, and win a pot of money at the end of a set period — then use your research to invest for real …(also, all of your competitors are giving you their research for free! Suckers!). My infomercial: Stop wasting your time on Baseball, Basket Ball, Football, Soccer, or Hockey, which only take your money! Play a game that can make you REAL money! Just send me three easy payments of $19.95! Act now! Supplies are limited to the first 6 billion! 

4) Buy companies you love: Guitars, watches, motorcycles, helicopters,  Hollywood, cosmetics, fashion, theater, whatever turns you on! My wife watches Charlie Hunnam on Sons of Anarchy, and begged me to buy Harley (HOG). I love music, so I bought a stock of a company I had heard of, Avid (NYSE: AVID), which makes Protools, a software used by every professional musician in the world. There is also Porsche (OTN: POAHF), Virgin Media (NASDAQ: VMED) and TakeTwo Interactive Inc. (TTWO) which owns RockStar & 2K Games, two well known video game companies. Your imagination is your limit, from Barbie (MAT) to Dungeons & Dragons (HAS) to Phineas & Ferb (DIS) to parachutes to Mythbusters (Discovery Communications, NASDAQ: DISCA) to L’Oreal (NASDAQ: LRLCY).

5) Buy companies you hate (and get your money back!): Microsoft is a dirty thief. I am determined to get my money back (see article related to this: here).

Lies we have told you so far … (Quick tip)

As a follower, you have many benefits  such as not having to think. But, there are problems too.

For the past two months and eight articles, we have been preaching the same fundamental actions: Buy solid stocks, keep costs low, avoid brokers & administrators, hold your stocks long term and ignore stock news.

But as one of our genius friends always says, “There is an exception that makes the rule.” He must be a genius, because that axiom doesn’t make any sense to us.

Here is the exception: Read stock news, on losers — because the bigger the loss, the greater the potential recovery. So, every once and a while, Google something like, “Prices fall”, “Stock slips” or “investors are selling”, and note the names of companies on that list. Here are three current examples: Caterpillar; JCPenney; Apple;

However, don’t actually read the article! You are trying to get ideas on companies with a sale price, not over think it. Why this is true: here.

***

Bonus quick tip!

So, now your thinking, “These people are asking me to put my money into the least safe place I could put it! I’m going to lose all of my money!”

Well, maybe yes and maybe no. You want to be sure about your money? Put it in a savings account. That is as close to a sure thing as is possible in this life — too bad the sure thing is that it will lose ground on inflation.

We live in a world of volatility. The question is not if a company experiences volatility in it’s price/business, but, is this volatility based on real or perceived problems.  

There are a lot of reasons there can be a loss  in the price of a company: Pending legal action/outcomes, income loss, change in management, market loss, change in strategy/product/the color of the VPs tie, opinions, economic astrology, etc.

Where there are many reasons for a price loss, there are only two categories: Real and perceived.

Remember, the market is run by people that a) panic b) follow the panic-ers and c) people that take advantage of all the panic. The thought process of each of these people can be very, very complex, but the results in aggregate are fairly easy to understand: if there is bad news, the price goes down; if there is good news, the price goes up.

This is where you’re BS detector comes in, and a little common sense. Also, the slightest hint of research … but just a pinch! Just enough to answer this: Is the price low because the product sucks or because the press sucks?

NOTE: StockGuilt is a blog about interesting stocks, and our views. We are not stock brokers, investment councilors, planners or legal advisers. In fact, at least one of us is an idiot. The rest are just folks who think about investments. This is what we think, and what we will do/did. In no way are we telling your what to buy or sell … Do your own homework.

If it works out for you, and you feel generous, well, we’ll probably get in trouble if we take your money, so …  We like Ronald McDonald house, Unicef, Salvation Army and SafeNest. 

10 easy steps to purchasing your stock. Now with TIPS and real cane sugar!

Here are ten random steps and 12 random tips on investing. We have put them in chronological order, sort of.

10) Keep an eye out for companies to invest in. Create a list (can be done online on your personal investment account). TIP #1: Keep an eye out for companies every where … in the subway, on a plane, on a lunch break, at your doctors office. You should always be thinking, “Hey, I bet that company is doing well! I wonder  …” TIP #2: What is your specialty? Are you a plumber? Then you have specialized knowledge! Look for companies that you have “inside” information on. This works for all professions/educations/hobbies/obsessions. Take a look around, at the products you see everyday. I am positive there are some great bargains there for the buying!

9) Scrimp and save: I always tell myself, “1 dollar today, is $100 when I retire! Am I willing to spend $100 on a pen?” This is my mantra — especially when something catches my eye, and I get that jones for a little retail inebriation. TIP #3: Open up a new bank account (make sure they don’t charge a monthly fee!) or investment account and have a percentage of your wages transferred into it — this is your “business account”; use it for your investments. TIP#4: Either a) spend only cash [i.e., $100/week petty cash fund] or b) put a stop to all transfers/lending/overdrafts etc. on your checking account, and then put only a set amount of money in that account. A worse idea is to buy a pre-paid card to accomplish the same thing, but they charge you to buy it, and maintain it (example prepaid card; example gift card). TIP#5: Don’t spend change, ever! Take your change, put it in a piggy bank, and once every few months, deposit it into your “business account”.  We bet you’ll be surprised! 

8) Buy good value stocks (explanation) in bulk! So, we have found three companies we want to buy. We have $3000 dollars to invest. The math seems simple: $1000 for each, right? No.

The reason why not, is that you have to pay the fee’s three times! If you think of each fee as another partial share you can’t buy, then you can see that the lower the purchase amount, the greater the fee is, by percent: i.e., $8 is 8% of $100, but $8 is only 0.2% of $3000! TIP#6: While you wait for your money to accumulate to ~$3000 (or whatever), you can use the money to buy tax-free bonds (and if your really smart, you can ladder them [example]) (this also can be used as part of your cash reserve).

7) Buy stocks in sectors: In the economy there are different sectors (example). Your goal is to buy quality value stocks in each of these sectors (advisers tend to want to invest in them in percentages, based on the percentage they represent in the economy; i.e., if consumer goods makes up 15% of the economy, your stocks in that sector should represent %15 of your stock portfolio. We really don’t know if this is based on any science, or if it is just “common sense” [or simply a  historical anachronism]. Our thoughts are that buying solid value  and growth [definition] stocks in all sectors will be hard enough, and it will be sufficient). For more info, read this short article: here.

6) Diversify by never buying the same stock twice: Buy one company and hold it until you retire. Diversify by purchasing stocks in all sectors (first one stock in each) then, when you have all the sectors covered,  buy another company in the same sector. This will diversify your portfolio (why is this necessary?).  TIP #7: If you are going to sell a stock because you are not happy with it’s performance/management/policies etc., sell it and then transfer the money into your IRA. Why is this a good idea? Well, you don’t want to make too much money during the year, or your taxes will kill you, and since you can only put in $5500/yr, your limited in how much you can sell. Plus, it forces you to only sell a few stocks a year (or $11,000 for you and your spouse — who needs their own IRA!). It also makes sure you are investing the maximum into this great vehicle while simultaneously preventing you from spending it!

5) Buy using a “Market Order”: Did you know that companies charge more for a limit order or other ‘exotic’ orders? Since we are investing for the long term, a few cents wont make a big difference — so we at StockGuilt just buy and then go to the park with our kids. TIP #8: If a company is doing a terrible job, and you realize you have made a mistake, you can sell it at a loss and come out even if you also sell a stock that has made money in that same year (i.e., a loss of $500 and a gain of $500 makes your capital gains zero!). Always keep track of the bottom line, and be as close to no profit as possible for your taxes.

4) Give money! (A.k.a., Tip # 9)  This has nothing to do with purchasing stocks, but we feel it is important. If you are going to pay taxes, and let the government use your money to do stupid and/or horrid things, you are going to hate yourself. But, you have the option of spending your tax dollars on the right things! If you think the government should be spending more money on education, then that’s where you should put your money. Don’t think of it as charity, think of it as your duty as the head of a very, very small department of the federal government. You alone decide where that money should be allocated! Congrats on the promotion!

3) Go to the library and read a book: This is where you get expanded knowledge of investments. Keep away from books on stock investing, as this will make you over-think things and mess up the long term strategy that will work, if you just leave it alone!  TIP #10: Read non-fiction biographies for insights and inspiration on new companies, strategies, and a warm buzz of enthusiasm! It doesn’t matter who, what, where, when, or how, you will be inspired. TIP #11: Forget about your stocks! Just leave them be. Do not watch the “market news” or any of those investing shows, as this will just make you anxious. If you need inspiration, read it in  mutual fund prospectuses.

2) Read Discover magazine and Popular Science, etc. (A.k.a., TIP #12): This is the cutting edge of science, and we are constantly astonished by what we read in these magazines — and more importantly, about the companies that are making it happen.

1) Get some disparate friends (A.k.a., TIP #13): Not desperate friends, but disparate, diverse, weird. They will have insights into investments you would never think of. Buy them a drink, and let them blow your mind!

ROTH-IRA vs. Godzilla! (Quick Tip)

If you are going to get into investing, the very first thing you should do is look into an IRA (look at the pros/cons of ROTH vs. traditional here).

Any online investment house can host your IRA, for free (well,  the account is free).

Why an IRA? Because it forces you to not spend what you save (or, at least gives you serious pause), while also giving you a tremendous tax advantage (while the money is within the IRA):

i.e., If you cue up all your big-gun dividend yielding stocks, and put them into your IRA, you don’t pay taxes on the dividends (whether or not you re-invest them: why this is important) … then you can buy non-dividend stocks* for your non-IRA investments and not pay taxes until you sell them [at which point you should have very little “income”, a.k.a., you’re retired, and won’t get taxed like a brain surgeon].

As one professional said, “Put your tax-adverse investments within your IRA, and put your tax-advantaged investments (e.g., US government bonds) outside of your IRA.”

Hustle! The faster you get your IRA up, the more you can contribute! Time is the main variable at work here!

*Keep this in mind and be careful — in general companies that pay dividends do so because they are not reinvesting their money, whereas a company that is growing fast is probably not paying dividends (or, very little).

NOTE: StockGuilt is a blog about interesting stocks, and our views. We are not stock brokers, investment councilors, planners or legal advisers. In fact, at least one of us is an idiot. The rest are just folks who think about investments. This is what we think, and what we will do/did. In no way are we telling your what to buy or sell … Do your own homework.

If it works out for you, and you feel generous, well, we’ll probably get in trouble if we take your money, so …  We like Ronald McDonald house, Unicef, Salvation Army and SafeNest. 

10 ways to over-complicate investing and lose money while doing it! Or, Why my five year old can pick stocks better than you.

The number one rule in stocks is: Buy low, sell high.

Listen, stocks are scary, because you are investing money and you may lose some of it. But, you go to Vol*dMart to buy groceries every other week, and your probably spending a lot more on those goods than you are on stocks. Why is it so hard to buy stocks?

There are a lot of psychological reasons why buying stocks is hard:

1) You want the perfect stock! The more choices there are out there, the worse you’ll believe your final choice is (seriously, watch this. It will blow your mind); so you hesitate and lose all initiative.

2) You want to buy it at the perfect time! There is no way to know when the perfect time to buy was, until it is in the historical record. Just buy when a stock is really low, and hold the sucker till your 59. I.e., It’s like, you go into Target and see a winter jacket on sale for 33% of it’s previous price, but its June. Since you needed a jacket the previous winter, and had been planning on buying one anyway. You buy it, and next winter you have a good coat. 

3) You don’t know what your doing: I get this, but really, it’s no more complicated than buying a cart full of groceries. It’s way simpler than buying a car, because, heck, if you don’t like it, you just sell it right back and the price is pretty much the same!

4) You worry about the company going out of business. OK, read up on the company, a little.  But don’t over think this. If 5 professionals say, “Hey this company rocks!” It’s probably not going anywhere.

5) You see a company on MSNBC/FOX Business/CNN Business etc., in trouble, and you shy away from it — but those are the only bargains you see. Well, you don’t get $0.15 off a dented can of soup cause it’s pretty! And it’s still the same soup! 

6) You want to buy the next Google, Amazon or Microsoft, with penny stocks, but don’t know which one to buy. Here is the truth, all of them are extremely risky, and 99% of them are garbage. Do you have time to look into these companies? I don’t, and this is one of the two mutual funds I own (small cap and medical insurance). Let the pros figure this out.

7) Your friends/coworkers/relatives/bus boy know more about stocks than you, and you know you can’t compete, and so you don’t. Well, that solves your problem of having to compete with them! But there is a simpler method: Don’t judge your portfolio/decisions/life by other people. Judge it by itself: is it getting better? Just ignore other people. There will always be people smarter, richer, and better at anything/everything than you. But, there will always be someone better than them too.

8) Too many numbers, graphs and ways of looking at this crap! Seriously, there is. Ignore most of that it (look at market cap, dividend, P/E ratio, price and some ratings — done!). Again, if the professionals are saying buy, it is probably OK to just go and buy it. I know there are a lot of serious investors out there who will need some knappy wipes after reading that last sentence, but just because She/He doesn’t know if a company is good or not, doesn’t have any bearing on whether the company’s good! Other people can be right! And another thing these “super knowledgeable” investors seem to forget: It’s pretty easy to buy and sell stuff. If you buy it low, and it goes even lower, you can just wait (or even buy more!). If it goes up, great! Whats the big risk? I don’t understand it …

9) Stocks aren’t safe! Look, if I had bought 10 share of the S&P 500 when I graduated high school in 1993, it would have cost me $4630 at its highest point – at it’s lowest point in the past 10 years, it would have been worth $6830. That is still a profit of $2200. If I had kept it until this very moment, it would be worth: >$15,000, and that is after TWO horrible stock market crashes and the biggest depression since 1930! Lets see your savings account do that!

10) Investing needs to be super-sophisticated. Well, hate to tell you buddy, but you’ve been lied to your entire life. The best diet? Eat less.  The best pickup line? “Hello, I find you attractive. Would you like to have coffee sometime?” Best solution to a mathematical/scientific conundrum? The simplest explanation  The best way to make money in stocks? Buy something.

**

Take home message: Buy stocks of companies you know. Don’t think a lot about it. Really, that’s it.

Don’t watch the market news, don’t dither, don’t read the WSJ. Don’t log-in and look at your account all the time. Just buy a solid company, and play with your kids. Simple.

And tell your self this: If you were explaining to your child about a company and you said, “You know, ___, where we have shopped your entire life, and where mommy and daddy shopped with their grandma and grandpa? The one that’s on every corner in America? Yes, that one. Do you think it will be there tomorrow?” My 5 year old could pull the trigger on that one!

You wanta buy a Hog and ride off into the sunset?

Moral dilemma time … Do you save for your children’s college or do you buy a all American-made, kick-ass Harley? Do you come home to a mess every night  kiss your bedraggled spouse and cook fish-sticks, or do you pound tequila with Jax Teller?

What if I told you, you could do both? And cheaper than you thought: at $26,000 – $36,000 a motorcycle, buying a Harley Davidson motorcycle doesn’t seem like a path to financial freedom; but buying a share of this company, NYSE: HOG, (that’s got to be the best ticker symbol ever!) at around $52/share (click the link above for a real time quote), this just may be your ticket to ride!

A poor economy has slowed sales of this Motorcycle powerhouse, but sales will never disappear. Recent talk of increasing dividends, coupled with a depressed market price may give you a great buy-in price on this chrome-plated beauty. This is a stock that will only rise (think blue collar folks recovering from the depression(s)), and it has a serious moat around it -There are no other American companies that pose any competition – and if we know anything about our outlaw biker brothers and sisters, its that only American will do. At least, if they want to hang with the cool kids.

So, what’s the problem here? This is a StockGuilt portfolio “buy”, at this point, and we’ll do just that when the funds roll in … but it was a bit of an ethical conundrum.

I mean, lets just look at the list of negatives here: Does this support oil companies (see StockGuilt manifesto)? Currently there are 0 motorcycles companies that utilize alternative fuel sources, and there is no research (as far as we can tell) that there ever will be. Also, biker gangs do a lot of bad things! They ride Harley’s! Also, just by it’s existance, and it’s enthusiastic following, we know that Harley’s are only around because of simple racism. I mean, seriously, there are more than 10 other countries that make motorcycles that have better reliability and performance than any Harley Davidson cruisers — hell, even hard core bikers laugh about how unreliable and poorly operating Harleys are. They leak so much oil, that there is a term for it: marking their territory.

Ok. So, why do we think this is alright to own? Motorcycles may be gas-burning, but they are the origional high-MPG vehicles. Ranging from 33-48 MPG, for a beefy hog. So, no. They don’t support the oil industry as much as that 4-Runner you have in your driveway. What about the drugs, violence, prostitution, etc? OK, lets just say that 100% of full-time bikers were doing drug deals, which they aren’t  but even if they were, the motorcycle has nothing to do with the business. I mean, do we want to boycott Wilson Suede and Leather too? (well, maybe, depends if your a PETA person or not). Regardless, StockGuilt has no qualms about owning a stock associated with good and bad people, cause every type of people are good and bad. Just cause they prefer choppers to clippers doesn’t make them evil.

But this racism thing, well we can’t shake that. A lot of people that ride Harleys are racists. Does supporting H&D mean supporting racism? Perhaps. We here at StockGuilt don’t think so. It’s an American product, made in America for Americans, but that doesn’t mean that it is bad. It represents America, home of the free, and people like to be reminded of that. Some of the free a dirty bigots, true … but most of the free, well, they love their families, want to retire well off and ride off into a sunset.

NOTE: StockGuilt is a blog about interesting stocks, and our views. We are not stock brokers, investment councilors, planners or legal advisers. In fact, at least one of us is an idiot. The rest are just folks who think about investments. This is what we think, and what we will do/did. In no way are we telling your what to buy or sell … Do your own homework.

If it works out for you, and you feel generous, well, we’ll probably get in trouble if we take your money, so …  We like Ronald McDonald house, Unicef, Salvation Army and SafeNest.