Most Friday’s I drop my daughter at dance class, head to one of Melbourne’s best cafés and have a latte while I wait for Borders to open at 10. I then have around 20 minutes to choose and scan an investment book. While I am normally a slow reader I can skim a book in 20 minutes and pick out a few lessons which resonate with me.
Today my book of choose was Way of the Turtle, by one of the original turtles, Curtis Faith.
Almost every page I scanned contained a …

Given today’s general dearth of beaten-down assets outside of residential real estate and financial institutions, investing gradually probably won’t cause you to miss great opportunities. But it will keep you out of trouble and ensure that you have capital with which to take advantage of any bargains ahead. In my book, going slow here makes the most sense.
You can read the whole 12 pages here, I assure you it will be time well spent.
It is good to see my current thinking and portfolio stance validated, yet at the same time …

Would you rather a cat scratch your bum or a hamster hang off your face?
That was the insightful answer my five year daughter provided when I asked the women of the household their opinion on Bare Escentuals, Inc. (BARE). Once the laughter died down my partner gave this less amusing, but clearer response for those who can’t interpret the thought patterns of a five year.
Makeup is a tough market to crack. It is both:

Oversupplied and
Dominated by companies with massive marketing budgets.

Can BARE prosper?

Makeup is prone to fads. BARE is a …

Click to Enlarge
Rich Smith over at the Fool concludes this article on Bare Escentuals, Inc. (BARE) with good advice
Let’s see whether the company’s free cash flow story looks similarly attractive — once management gets around to releasing its cash flow statement, that is. Seems to me, Bare just might bear closer examination.
In the following he was spot on that the low PEG is enticing. That is what has me digging deeper. Though I found his comment on risk possibly symptomatic of delusional thinking.
Yet with the stock down 32% in three …

Free Stuff

Retire Early is a great source of free retirement spreadsheets
Good free portfolio software for private and professional investors. Icarra

For Investing Research

Reuters is good, but a tad slow.
Morningstar Charts in Ogres Crypt.
Ten Years Financial Summary free at Ogres Crypt.
Seeking Alpha Transcripts fantastic service based on one simple, great, inexpensive idea. The whole site keeps getting better and better.
Google Finance with its cool news flagged on easily scalable chart and the new Google Stock Screener
Yahoo Finance and their other useful tools like the industry browser

Charts

StockCharts is good for a quick snapshot.
BigCharts. …

According to this pitch at Motley Fool CAPS Bare Essentials, Inc. (BARE) is a TMFSarahGen favourite. I’ve known Sarah for a while know and have always admired her openness to investing styles and willingness to combine both fundamental and technical analysis. Sarah also freely combines short term trading with long term investing. Those traits are pure Fusion Investing.
Sarah recently became a fully fledged Rule Breaker analyst. Her CAPS pitch on BARE highlights
Strong repeat business from the most loyal customers in cosmetics combined with growing international sales, accelerating door openings (at …

The fund continues to be perform strongly. Five out of six positions are outperforming the ASX200 index with only the ANZ marginally underperforming. The fund is currently in the green and I am looking at investment possibilities. If I do not make the time to invest in individual assets over the coming week I will invest some of the cash into an index fund.
Investing is a time consuming activity. If you don’t have both the time and considerable interest to analyse individual investments then index funds should be your …

I just returned from ten days holiday in New Zealand. Before leaving I placed a trailing stop order on the 1,000 ANZ shares the Fund bought in mid July. The stop was set at 5% below the recent high of $19.52.
As I have previously said, I generally do not trade frequently. However, in the current market environment and attitude to financials, this seemed prudent. The stop was triggered at open on Friday July 25th for a 5.8% return in just over a month. However, as I neither wrote about …