Though Buffett is commonly considered to be a value investor, he seems just as focused on growth. Either way, he’s proven that he’s an intelligent investor. As Buffett’s sidekick Charlie Munger once said, “All intelligent investing is value investing.”
Google as a value stock Buffett focuses on companies with favorable long-term economics that have strong competitive advantages, companies such as Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI), Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT), and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) — all current Berkshire holdings.

Coca-Cola, for instance, was called by one Wall Street analyst “very expensive” around the time Buffett started buying it. It wasn’t a typical value stock. But Buffett once said about Coca-Cola: “If you gave me $100 billion and said take away the soft drink leadership of Coca-Cola in the world, I’d give it back to you and say it can’t be done.”
Now that’s a competitive advantage.

See, value investing is not all about buying stocks with low price-to-earnings, price-to-book, or price-to-sales ratios. Far from it.

For example, Google would have been a great value stock at its August 2004 IPO, despite selling at the time for more than 100 times earnings.
A value stock trading for more than 100 times earnings? Yep. Google was growing fast, was continuing to take market share, and had a sustainable competitive advantage. Given its growth rate since and its powerful model, it was underpriced back then.

So I’d suggest that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer should take a page out of Buffett’s investing book, keep the $45 billion he wants to spend on buying Yahoo!, and forget trying to take search engine leadership away from Google.
Investing shock: Buffett was wrong?! Buffett didn’t buy Google, but legendary value investor Bill Miller saw the value and scooped up shares…

OK, that’s one point of view: let’s balance it with this famous word of Lord Keynes: “A speculator is one who runs risk of which he is aware & an investor is one who runs risks which he is unaware…” It seems to me that today, there might be too many investors in the markets!

stocktradingsystems.us

Opinions about day trading vary widely. Some people swear it is the best way ever to make a profit in the stock market…others, including the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) advise strongly against day trading, insisting it is too risky. As with many things having to do with investing and the stock market you will hear all kinds of things about day trading. The trick is to sort the information out.

But what exactly is day trading and why do so many advise against it? Day traders literally trade everyday, all day, buying and selling sometimes very rapidly. They hope to see a stock going up, for instance, quickly buy a block of that stock and then sell it again as soon as it has risen enough to make a reasonable profit. If everything works right the trader makes a profit every day from the normal movement of stock prices up and down.

Day traders try to concentrate on certain stocks that are particularly suitable for day trading. The most important thing is that the stock must be one that is highly liquid, which means it is bought and sold often. This allows the day trader to buy and sell easily. Liquidity varies with market volume and the size and nature of the business. In general almost all stocks on the major exchanges are more than liquid enough for day trading purposes.

To be suitable for day trading a stock also needs to be sold in sufficient volume that the buying and selling activity of one trader won’t affect the market price of the stock. Day traders usually buy and sell big blocks of stock so a good day trading stock needs to have at least 500,000 shares traded a day. Day traders also look for stocks that have high volatility, which means that the price goes up and down rapidly. A stock with a rapidly changing price is perfect for day trading. The ideal is at movement of at least $2 a day.

A day trader also needs to be able to find sufficient real time information of the orders for a stock. This is sometimes called price transparency or market depth and lets the trader know how much stock they can probably move in a certain period of time. Traders need to have access to the NASDAQ level II quote screens in order to gather this information.

There is nothing illegal about day trading but it can be extremely risky. Almost all day traders are working with borrowed funds which they hope to increase through their buying and selling. If the NYSE and the NASDAQ classify someone as a “pattern day trader” then that trader must trade through a margin account with at least $25,000 as a deposit in it. The broker who handles the account will require that further deposits be made if the trader’s holdings drop too far in value.

Because day trading is so risky the Securities and Exchange Commission has devoted quite a bit of energy to spreading warnings about the practice. Their fear is that people will become involved without understanding how much money they can lose in a very short time.

Anyone who decides to try day trading can expect to suffer huge losses as they try to learn how to do it successfully. Very few will succeed and make money in day trading. No one should ever try day trading with money that they cannot afford to lose without any problems.

Day traders are not really investors. They buy and sell over the span of time as short as seconds or minutes. They never hold stock after the close of the trading day because the risk of overnight price changes is too great for them. Day trading is really speculating; some call it gambling.

Be sure to avoid websites which promote day trading by talking about the great profit potential and then offer you ‘expert information’ or ‘hot tips’ for money. The recommendations are usually actually paid for themselves and the advice is worthless.

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