Excuses aside...my intentions are to own stocks that:
- are long-term, "buy-and-hold" investments;
- represent great underlying companies and/or valuable assets;
- have excellence across as many metrics as possible;
- are cheap by valuation; and
- pay outstanding, stable, well-funded dividends, or
- promise extraordinary growth.
Conversely, my intentions are to avoid stocks that:
- are short-term, "day trader" investments;
- represent minimal value beyond their stock symbol;
- have poor metrics by any measure;
- are expensive by valuation; and
- pay no or low, unstable, or underfunded dividends, or
- promise low or no growth.
Seems fairly simple, doesn't it? And yet, I've bought more lousy stocks, and lost more money owning those lousy stocks, than any so-called investor ever should.
February is traditionally my "distressed" month, when I choose a basket of downtrodden stocks in hopes of some of them bouncing back. The ones that do rebound - for example, Ford (F), Blackstone (BX), and Jones Soda (JSDA) - seem obvious in retrospect; the ones that fail seem obvious as well. I think these "distressed" stock results exemplify (in an amplified way) what my investment philosophy should be. Fundamentals always win; fundamentals always matter.
Starting this month, I will attempt to clear the deck of any past failures (as noted before, I do own too many stocks), and use some additional discretion in the stocks I buy and own.
