We are starting a new series with the goal of making you a better investor. We expect this to be a long topic and perhaps it will actually be more like a series of topics, but wanted to give you an idea of where we’re going. We haven’t written this material yet, so it can certainly veer from these ideas, but we’ve put together a rough outline and thought you’d like to see it.
It’s important to know the difference between having a macro (or top down) investing style versus a micro (or bottom up) investing style and the times when one might be more important than another. We’ll help you gain in this understanding. We’ll also cover many different questions that you should ask yourself before placing one single dime into any new investment opportunity. You’ll not only know the question to ask but also why it’s important to know.
We’ll examine questions such as, “Is it better to diversify or specialize in investments?” And, “what are the advantages and disadvantages of each?”
We want to teach you a little bit about many common forms of investing so that you’ll have a basic grasp of which areas that you are interested in pursuing further. You won’t learn to be an expert in any of these areas simply by reading this blog, but you’ll learn more than the vast majority of other investors and that is a series edge to keeping and growing what you steward.
A quick rundown of types of investments that we plan to cover are:
1) Stock
- Trading – Why do Traders like graphs so much?
- Speculating – If you feel strongly which way the market or a sector is moving, how can you capitalize on this?
- Investing – Growth versus value? How do you pick the right stocks?
2) Mutual Funds
- What are they?
- How do they work?
- Who are they right for?
3) ETF’s
- What are they?
- How do they work?
- Who are they right for?
4) Options
- What’s the difference between a Put and a Call?
5) Bonds
- What is it?
- How does it pay you?
- How do changes in interest rates affect the value of your bond?
6) Real Estate
- Residential (Single Family Home, Duplex, Apartment, Section 8 )
- Commercial (Office, Warehouse, strip center, etc.)
- Hard Money Loans
7) Limited and General Partnerships
If you’ve been around here any length of time you know that we expect some pretty serious inflation (with perhaps a touch of deflation first just to keep things interesting! 🙂 So we want to continually come back to the macroeconomic view of the world when discussing each potential asset class.
Well, that should keep us busy for a while. Our goal is for this blog to be an incredible resource for your education, so if there’s another topic or focus that you’d like us to add to this list, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
This post is Part 2 in the series New Things Are On The Way. To use this as a growth tool to better understand your own calling, you might start by reading Part 1.