The best Christmas gift

If you still have Christmas gifts to buy (including one for yourself), consider buying the paperbacks today. E-books can be loaded almost instantly. My books on investing could truly mean gifting continues gifting forever and could make the reader a lot of money. I prefer investing like a turtle making small profits surely and slowly instead of betting it all. So far including this year, all my book profits are donated to charities.

For yourself, I only recommend one book titled Complete The Art of Investing. Click this link for more info.

	Kindle	Paperback
Cost	$9.99	$24.95
Pages (6*9)	850	600 plus web articles

It covers most topics in investing except day trading and risky strategies. If you are not convinced, click this link.

An average book on investing is about 250 pages. The Kindle version is the size of 3 books.  Many prefer hard copy more than e-books. Most likely, Kindle reader has been installed in your PC, iPad... If not, it is easy to install. There is a difference in cost due to the expensive paper. The royalties of these two books are about the same to me. Amazon’s has a “match-box” feature: If you buy the paperback version, you can get a free Kindle version of the same book. Why not order the Kindle version for yourself and give the paperback version to your friend. A very cost effective gift!

The following are my best sellers. They are also available from Amazon.com. They should be less than $8 each and most have paperback version.

Profit from 2017 Market Crash

Sector Rotation 3rd Edition

Momentum Investing 2nd Edition

The following are books for beginner investors. The Kindle version should be less than $3 each and most have paperback version.

Investing for Beginners.

The Art of Investing: Beginners

How to be a Billionaire

Can China Say No?  Jan. 4 for 5 days. 60% off.

Why I give the first book away? It is for my friends. In addition, I expect the reader will find this book very useful and s/he will buy the full version: Complete the Art of Investing.

Which one is better?

You had an insider tip that could be hardly prosecuted and made a million dollar.

Or

From a new strategy you developed, you made $10,000 each in 10 trades.

You are right in either answer. It all depends on your age. If you have more than 10 years from your expected life, most likely the second one is better.

Consider the compounding benefit for the second option. However, no strategy is evergreen and hence you have to modify it to suit current market conditions. The second advantage is tax. You may have to share your million with Uncle Sam and your friendly state collector is smiling too. If your strategy has been proven, you can use it in your Roth account to reduce taxes.

Today's news on Cuba, new phone...

* Does the communist Vietnam threaten us? No. So is Cuba. Cuba has no resources except cigar and prostitutes.

 

Is China today communist? China is more capitalist than us; if you do not work, you die. Castro was a dictator (nothing wrong if he were a good one) but he did prosecute many for not agreeing with him. What I learn is the power of embargo from the US and its allies. It reminds me the ally of 8 nations against China due to not opening the ports for trade. If you do not trade, we send soldiers. If we have nothing to trade, we push opium. Which one is more barbarous - you decide.

 

* The curve screen of the new mobile phone may give us a headache. It is good to prevent folks from looking at it all day long.

 

* In desert, jet fighters are king. That's why Israel still survives surrounded by enemies as predicted in the Bible.

Yellow sheep of the class

I guessed it wrong on the source of my friend's furniture from his Face Book pictures. My friend who is a retired preacher mistakingly think I am smart. Here is my humble reply:

This is the IQ meter. I fail miserably. I always pretend to be smart and wealthy in order to sell my books. No one buys books on investing from a loser except to boost his/her ego . 

We have many smart ones in our class of about 50 including a MIT PhD, a director, a chief hospital administrator, Martin Yan, doctor(s), pharmacist(s), businessmen /women..., not to mention a shepherd for men/women. I was below the class average in IQ (but making up in look and God is fair haha). I am the yellow sheep of the class. . Thanks to the achievers who make me look bad and I have to dig a hole right now to bury my stupid but handsome face. Have a great day!

Success in Olympics does not mean healthy citizens

Proof: Go to any Walmart store in the US and ask 100 shoppers randomly to run around the building. Average their finished times.

Do the same in China. Ensuring both Walmart stores are the same size.

Second theory. Select top 100 athletes in the US for various age groups and check how many still survive. Do the same for China.

Third theory. Do the same for their children. Check how many have defects.

Beauty and the wealth

Pow's shallow hypothesis on beauty: Most beautiful girls are rich. The poor beautiful girls can use their beauty to find rich folks to get married. Of course, there are a few true loves over money. The beautiful girl usually gives birth to a beautiful baby via good genes.

Proof: Just go to any Dollar Store.

Second Proof: Give me any girl of average look. Koreans can transform her into a beautiful girl (even the height by extending the bones). However, the standard of beauty in the west and the east is different so specify your requirements.

Being attacked

It is not the first time and it will not be my last time of being attacked for promoting my books via comments. They do not realize my contributions. Here is my standard reply.

I do not profit from my books as ALL profits are donated to charities including 2016. My purpose is to share investing ideas.

I do not say all my ideas are correct but I can live financially sound for the rest of my life (keeping my fingers crossed). Are the following after the fact here and in my blog?
1. Advised to buy crude in mid Jan., 2016.
2. Advised to dump Apple at 132 or sth. (I believe last year).
3. Advised to buy Apple at about $55 in my book that used Apple as its only example.
4. Advised not to buy rare earth miners several years ago here. Same for Buffett's funds.
5. Advised to buy AMAG recently.
6. If you buy all the stocks in my article Amazing Return after the SA publish date, you would make more than 50% in a year. Actually I challenged the performance of all SA articles past or present of 10 or more stocks in the same article. So far, no challenge.
7. Made 80% in my largest taxable account in 2009. I described why and how in my book.

The above can be verifiable. There are some bad predictions for sure, but they are based on educated guesses. Now momentum investing is doing very good and a week of return is worth more than a year of profit in selling books. So what is my priority?

Is debt important as long you can pay for it?

This argument must be written by Obama's folks. From his administration, our national debt has its recent height. It will lower our competitive edge. We have to pay more to service our debts instead of investing in profitable ventures such as infra structure. Our debts will be paid by our children and grand children who do not have a voice now.

Check out Greece and many other countries for examples. We really have to change the Constitution to require balancing budget instead of excessive printing (or supply) of money. From the many followers, I believe the herd is wrong.

Tell the truth

Will the presidents who have not broken their campaign promises please stand up?

None in recent decades. I do not like them except for Trump not fulfilling the promises - they're too outrageous and not practical except to the dumb voters.

Morning before Thanksgiving

It is 8:45 and only 14 comments at Wall Street Breakfast in Seeking Alpha. Most must have taken off for the holiday. Happy Thanksgiving. First to Trump for not enforcing his campaign promises (he must read my blog religiously :)) and soothing the market.

A enemy could be a friend if you cannot find a worse enemy. Trump demonstrated that. Same for politics - it would be a case study in Harvard. In order to contain China, the US has to play India card as India is an enemy of Pakistan and Pakistan is a friend of China. Too complicated for a morning before the holiday.

The US and China should be better in the same bed than the US with EU. Both US and EU have similar products such as airplane. We create jobs by looking at who is our competitor first. Competing with low-wage countries is a fool's game or insulting the voters' intelligence; I bet a lot of them (not you)  have low IQ otherwise they will not vote for Trump :).

Money talks! Facebook kowtow (typo?) to China, so are the movie stars not wanting to be blacklisted by China, the second movie market in the world. Entertainers, your jobs in life is to entertain, not playing politics.

Amazon is hurting the retail stores. Amazon is not making a lot of money. I can see the fourth wave when Chinese have the retail chains in the US cutting the middle man such as Walmart. Barns&Noble cuts down some seats as I had a tough time to find one in my last visit - part of cost saving?

Loans

Using today's low interest rate as an example, if the interest rate is hiked, the old bonds lose value esp. the long-term bonds. Hence, the low-interest bonds today (again particularly the long-term bonds) are risky. For me and me only, I buy long-term bonds when interest rate is 8% (higher or lower is defined by you) or higher.

Using China as an example, when the USD appreciates (as in today) and the loan is in USD, China would win as the payback in USD today is worth more in buying power than before (or comparatively to Chinese currency). The country should appreciate its currency but in reality all want to depreciate it to boost export.

A turn around strategy

Many value stocks tend to stay in this phase for a long time. When the turnaround starts, it could be very profitable.

Market Timing

Do not buy any stock when the market is risky as described elsewhere in the book. Actually you should sell most of the stocks when the market is risky.

Buy Metrics

Metric	Value	Conservative	Aggressive
General
Market Cap	>300 M	>1,000 M	>100 M
Price	> 2	>10	>1
Avg. Volume	>20,000	>50,000	>10,000
USA	Only	Only	Foreign but listed in USA
Fundamental
Forward P/E	<15 span="">	<10 span="">	<25 span="">
Earning Gr Q-Q	>5%	>8%	>3%
ROE	>10	>15	>5
P / FCF	<10 span="">	<8 span="">	<15 span="">
Debt / Equity	<.5	<.25	<1 span="">
Technical
SMA-50%	>10	>15	>5
Misc.
Blue Chip       Growth	A or B	A	A or B
Fidelity	>6	>8	>5
IBD	>60	>90	>50
Vector Vest	>=1	>=0.8	>=12
Value Line Proj. 3-5% return	>5%	>10%	>5%
Zacks	>=4	5	>=4
ASSS	>=2	>=5	>=2

The assignment values for the metrics are not fixed; feel free to change it according to your own risk level. I do have suggestions for conservative investors and aggressive investors.

Some of the metrics are not readily available in Finviz.com and the following describes how to modify them.

Explanation

·        Market Cap. The free version of Finviz.com does not allow you to specify the range. Use ‘Any’ and then select the stocks according to the specified values. Average Volume has the similar restriction.

·        The conservative values for Market Cap, Price and Average Volume try to select larger companies. The aggressive values try to select smaller companies, which historically are more risky but perform better.

·        I prefer ‘USA’ for Country. Stay away from small companies from developing countries unless you can trust their financial statements.

·        Forward P/E measures the value of the stock. Ensure “E” (Earnings) is positive. I prefer it over P/E (from the last twelve months).

·        Earnings Growth Quarter to last Quarter is preferred to be positive unless it is during a recession.

·        ROE measures how well the company has been managed.

·        P/FCF. “Price / Free Cash Flow” cannot be manipulated easily. Together with low “Debt / Equity”, it measures whether the company would bankrupt.

·        SMA-50%. Some stocks tend to stay in a value stage for a long while (termed value trap). We like to select stocks just starting being noticed and on its way up.

·        Misc. Many sites have evaluated the stocks for us. Some only let their customers to access such information, some are available for free trials or are available from the library.

·        ASSS is my scoring system.

With the above, I have 35 stocks on 10/28/16. If you need 10 stocks for further evaluation, try to sort Forward P/E in descending order and select the top 10. If you cannot find any or substantially less than normal, it implies the market is risky, so take a break. If the performances of the last few stocks you selected are poor, take a break too as the market conditions do not favor the value metrics we specified. 

Qualitative analysis

Double click on the stock and read as many articles described on the stock as possible. If it meets all the criteria, buy the stock. Recommend to use market orders for large companies in a non-volatile market (when the average daily fluctuation is less than 0.5%). If the selected stock is the one you just sold, make you only buy it after 31 days to avoid Wash Sale penalty.

Keeping informed

Check the company updates of the stock you owned every month. One easy way is to enter the stocks in a portfolio in SeekingAlpha.com.

Sell the stock

Re-evaluate the stocks every 6 months.

If it does not meet the criteria or the market is risky, sell it. If it is only a few days away from the long-term capital gain, sell the losers right away or hold on the winner for a few more days.

Re-balance the portfolio after a stock has been sold. Ensure it is diversified enough into large/small cap and sectors.

Top-down Investing

It is similar to the above. Find the sectors that perform the best last month. Under Finviz.com, select the best sector under ‘sector’ one at a time. Several sites such as Fidelity compare the stock to the averages of stocks in the same sector.

 

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This is part of one chapter of my book "Complete the Art of Investing". If it helps you, envision how 850 pages will help you. 

For more of my reasoning, check out the book described next. The Kindle has 850 pages (6*9) for $9.99. It could be the best $10 you ever spend. Paperback is also available.

The above is an abstract from my book "Complete the Art of Investing" which is available from Amazon.


I challenged to have the best-performed article in Seeking Alpha history, an investing site, for recommending 5 or more stocks in one year after the publish date. The concepts for that article are discussed in this book.

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