THE TAKE STOCK: STRAIGHT ANALYSIS EDITION
16 SEPTEMBER 2011
DISAPPEARING ACT?
Where Did That Window Go?
Ah, the season of ghosts and goblins is almost upon us. And with it are things that go bump in the night — or perhaps disappear all together. Such is the case every now and again with certain programs, as Sean Pulrang of ICLUBcentral's Support Staff notes. Your reporter is most impressed that Sean took a proactive lead on posting answers to this dilemma, even before an SC member asked the question.
"If you've never run into this, it can be a bit odd to describe, but sometimes you'll click or double-click to open a program and it will show up for a split second, and then seem to disappear, except for a button or listing in your task bar," Sean notes in The Toolshed topic titled, Where Did My Window Go? "Most commonly, the program window is actually open, but is off to the side of your monitor's display, out of view," he adds.
Sean then goes on to note a couple of great options for dealing with this issue. What are they? Hop on over to The Toolshed to find out! And while you're there, take a few minutes to peruse previous Q & A's, or even post your own!
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR CRYSTAL BALL IS ON THE BLINK
Take Stock Offers Straight Analysis, Sans Emotion
At the time that the last issue of the Gazette (see Sept. 1 edition) was going to press, investors were reeling from the news that Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs was stepping down. Opinions as to whether the company would flounder following his exit ran the gamut. But the bottom line is, no one knows what the future of Apple, Inc., holds.
What? Your crystal ball is on the blink? No worries. On to the next best thing: Take Stock, an online stock analysis program that's a part of our suite of investment tools available at StockCentral. Here's what StockCentral founder and all-around guru Doug Gerlach has to say on the matter:
Take Stock is a completely mechanical tool for analyzing a stock. As such, it is rigorous and very conservative in its calculations, and relies solely on the numbers without any human input. It doesn't "know" anything about the economy, or about the overall market, or about a company's management team, or about the situation in a current industry, or about the factors that affect a company's profitability — all it knows is what the numbers say.
If a one-time event has a negative impact on a company's performance, all that Take Stock knows is that there has been a recent change that has had a negative effect, and if that negative trend continues, the stock will likely not perform according to your expectations. To Take Stock, it's better to be safe than sorry, so it will always err on the side of caution.
Knowing whether an event is an isolated incident or the start of a long-term trend can be difficult to discern, particularly for beginning investors (though experienced investors will sometimes decide wrongly, as well). If you're a beginning investor, the Take Stock tool can help you from falling into the trap of buying stocks of companies that don't have consistent, long-term growth; stable profitability; and a share price that provides for an adequate return.
If you're an experienced investor, the Wizard in the Take Stock program can allow you to override the default judgment items, so that you can decide for yourself whether a company is worth considering based on your personal assessment of its circumstances.
For any stock you analyze in Take Stock, you can drill down through the many pages of the analyses and learn why Take Stock has a positive or negative view of the company. Any negative elements are highlighted in red throughout the Quality, Mood, and Price considerations.
Take Stock is grounded in the methodology of BetterInvesting but emphasizes particular characteristics of company growth and quality, such as the consistency of growth and a company's recent performance, more heavily than in the BetterInvesting orthodoxy. You can learn more about the Take Stock approach to stock analysis in the 3rd Edition of Take Stock, available for purchase from ICLUBcentral.
Our subscribers use Take Stock in many ways. Some use it as a tool to conduct a "first look" at a new investing idea. If Take Stock is particularly negative, then they might decide to move on immediately to another idea. Others may use Take Stock to "confirm" their own stock analysis or as a second opinion after they've carried out their own stock study, to bring to light issues they might have missed or to provide reinforcement to their conclusions. Very conservative investors can use Take Stock alone as their sole source of stock analysis, only buying companies that are favorably rated by the program.
SPEAKING OF INPUT …
Toolkit 6 User Group, Club Operations Need Your Ideas!
We are currently working on the 2012 schedule of topics for both our Toolkit 6 User Group and our Investment Club Operations webinar series. Are there any parts of the Toolkit 6 program that you'd like to see demonstrated in a webinar? Are there burning topics about starting or running an investment club that you'd like us to address?
Please post your ideas on The Exchange and we'll see whether we can cover them in an upcoming webinar. And don't forget — the prior webinar topics are all available on the ICLUB.com website in the webinar archives.
TODAY'S ENTIRELY RELEVANT QUOTATION
"Investors are not behaving in their own best financial interest.
In the end, it appears, we make bad calls because we are human."
— Baba Shiv, associate professor of marketing at
the Stanford Graduate School of business and co-author
of a study that looked at the investment decisions made by
people who were unable to feel emotions because of brain lesions but who were otherwise normal. It then compared
the decisions with those of people who did feel emotions.
The result? The people without emotions did a lot better.