Though I just register today to put my 2 cents on some of the things on this thread (I have been following since the fund raiser released)
Before I get to things I want to discuss, big congrats to Ross on the success of the fund raiser (and super funny fund raiser video) to help him make videos that we all loved so much. I been in his shoes before when the work wasn't good, and have to stretch my earning as much as I can (80 to 100 bucks on food bill per month in Vancouver, Canada) our beans is at least 89 cents per can if you buy no name ones, I know that feeling. Also, I think Ross deserve much more because of his talent and devotion to the videos he makes. Keep up the good work!
This is regarding to the discussion BTW Ross and Teleros
Oil is basically black gold, due to the fact they are finite resources. The only problem is that it has to be cost effective to extract them for a company, conventional drilling cost so much less than tar sands drilling. I recommend this video to watch on Youtube,
"The Greatest Video You will ever see",
and many of you will realize that even with Shale gas discovery, we won't be able to keep up our energy meet coz of GROWTH (humans in this case). US and Canada can build tons of Keystone XL pipelines, US won't be able to achieve true form of energy Independence (at least not with all that growth and hoping for better economy mentality). It's essentially the power of exponential function, and how we fail to use it to realize some of the deep S*** we are in. Though if you watch Ross's Oil Well CP, that will help (I didn't really realize the problem Oil's Well is trying to present until I see the first video).
Moving on to 2nd topic, I agree with Ross's concept on long term investing, but I don't think you need complicated computer program to do all that. If you invest in long term, you shouldn't do many trades. Many inexperience investors spend too much time selling and buying stocks, unless you are a fund manager, day trader, need high frequency trading to make money but don't have the computer hardware and man power to do so, then don't do it.
That being said, being long term investing, you want to invest in a company that has good growth value, has thing everybody wants (even during recession like milk, cheese, tobacco, beer, plastic, certain commodities), price below their true value, pays dividends (not really a requirement, but good to have), big enterprise value, and have many years listed on major exchanges. (and preferably little or no debt)
The key idea is to find a stock that's good, but undervalued. Buy it, and hold on to it, once people realize how good it is, they will ditch the non performer (or over hyped one such as FB, Twitter) and come back to solid earning ones.
How do you know if stock is under valued? Look at it's P/E ratio, and Price/Book value. The multiplier of both should be less than 22, so low for both. One of the example I will provide is Brown Shoe Company (BWS.NYSE). When I first noticed it in Nov 2011 (the company is an example on a book that's first published in 1950s), it was 7.50 ish. Book value is 10.5, PE ratio is likely less than 10, if you buy a 1000 of that stock then, it will be....26 dollars each as of April 2014 (assume you don't sell it, but you shouldn't really until it hit 15 dollars, anything after is extra). The only downside is market is pretty saturated as of 2014, many companies are overvalued due to Fed QE policy, so you can only buy some stocks that's not too expensive and provide good dividends ( I recommend Rogers Sugar, its a Canadian company that makes, sugar in Canda, RSI.TO, its a medium buy now, but I might wait until its 4 dollars)
Buy it, and hold on to it, if it doesn't go up, at least it gives good dividends (7.5 percent a year).
In response to a comment Teleros was saying about holding on to the stock, it's a human nature for us to be greedy because we tend to hold on to a stock go when its high, even when its dropping (with the hope it will come back up again). A share itself has no value (it does has a book value, meaning the asset of the company), it's only what other people (or in this case, the market) thinks that set up the value of the stock.
you buy stock from pessimists, and sell it to optimists = profit (the difference between them)
The biggest enemy in stock investing is yourself. If something that has no valuation, you can sell it for whatever price you want, people will buy/diss it if they don't agree with your price. A good classic example is this.
Some guy bought 1000 shares of Apple stock for like 10 dollars each in early 2000, and makes $750k in September 2012 because he COMPLETELY FORGET he had it in the first place and just find out he has 1k shares of it right around the stock's peak. Since he forget, he is not influence by the market price, nor himself to sell it. Cases like those are rare, just look at Bit coins, same idea.
Lastly, only buy stock with the money you are willing to LOOSE, don't borrow or use important cash to buy stock because sometimes you will have to sell your stock at a LOSS to pay for immediate expenses.
PS: I know this is a lengthy post, and might not be in the right area. If required, can any forum mod let me know where I should move the oil/stock discussion to? Thanks in advance.
