The financial education you never got: markets, order types, fees, and building a portfolio that actually works
The session opens with market infrastructure basics: how primary markets handle IPOs while secondary markets enable ongoing trading, how exchanges enforce liquidity, and how they monetise through transaction fees and data subscriptions. The practical mechanics of order types — market, limit, stop-loss, stop-limit, fill-or-kill, good-till-cancelled, and take-profit — are walked through in detail, with a consistent emphasis that limit and stop-limit orders protect investors from flash crashes and erratic pricing better than simple market orders.
Fees emerge as the session's most insistent theme. Prehn argues that fees are the single most overlooked determinant of investment success, illustrating with a compounding model that a 3.2% fee fund leaves an investor roughly $26,000 worse off over 10 years versus a 0.5% fee fund on identical contributions. Transaction costs, stamp duties, and brokerage spreads compound the problem — particularly for small or frequent trades — and he recommends auditing every fee paid across recent trades before choosing a brokerage or fund.
On strategy, three stock archetypes are defined — income (dividends), value, and growth — and mapped onto a portfolio framework that replaces bonds entirely. Value stocks with strong free cash flow, high margins, and durable competitive moats (McCormick, Colgate, Altria cited) are positioned as the new bonds, offering 10–15% annual returns with lower volatility than growth names. Dividend yields above ~6% are flagged as a danger zone, often signalling high debt loads. Growth stocks (Tesla-style, PE ratios in the hundreds) are acknowledged as potentially rewarding but demand tolerance for 30–40% drawdowns.
Asset allocation is addressed directly: Prehn holds 0% bonds, ~50%+ value stocks, and the remainder in growth stocks plus a 1–5% crypto allocation. The 120-minus-age bond rule is dismissed given that a 30-year US Treasury yields only ~2.35%. Real estate is treated as a genuine diversifier for income, but only when the mortgage is low or paid off — a heavily mortgaged property is described as the worst of both worlds. Cash reserves of one to three months of expenses are recommended, with everything beyond that regarded as a liability due to inflation.
Dollar-cost averaging is presented as the behavioural antidote to retail investors' well-documented tendency to buy tops and sell bottoms. Investing a fixed amount weekly or monthly — more aggressively in down markets as an advanced variant — automatically buys more shares when prices are low. The 100-day moving average on TradingView is offered as a simple timing signal for ETF entries. On the ETF-vs-mutual-fund debate, ETFs win on cost and tax efficiency; the only justification for a mutual fund is a demonstrably skilled active manager charging below roughly 1% annually — a rare combination Prehn sources via a positive-alpha filter on screening tools.
Felix Prehn delivers a sweeping retail investor crash course covering how stock exchanges and order types work, why fees silently destroy long-term returns, and how to allocate across asset classes without bonds. The session blends foundational mechanics with strong personal opinions — zero bonds, heavy value stocks, disciplined dollar-cost averaging — and recurring warnings about emotion-driven decision-making.
half a percent here 1% there 2% here and there it really adds up and it massively erodes your long-term performance of your Investments
You cannot optimize every trade; accept selling slightly early or late, set your profit targets, and stick to them to avoid stress.
fees are the single most important and the single most overlooked item in in investing
Cash emergency reserve should be one to three months of your expenses depending on personal comfort
A home with a low mortgage that is fully paid off removes one of the main expenditures in life and reduces financial risk
If you are 100% exposed to one asset class, you're probably missing out on something; smart diversification means not diversifying just for the point of it
The only reasons to buy mutual funds over ETFs are relatively low fees (below ~1%) combined with a demonstrably good fund manager; most fund managers are not worth paying for
For tracking an index or indiscriminately adding money to the NASDAQ or S&P 500, ETFs are the easier way to go and the main selection criterion is fees and transaction costs
whether you're buying stocks or ETFs there is one rule do your homework and that is regularly because just because you bought bought the ETF it doesn't mean that the company's in it don't change
stocks require more knowledge on that specific stock don't buy things just because it's in the headline look at the numbers look at the maths look at their performance
if it's a growth stock well you're G to have to start and understand the tech behind it or at least the business model behind it how and when are they going to make money and how do they stop others from copying them
Stock price charts do not price in accumulated dividend reinvestment, so a stock that appears to underperform on price alone can still deliver strong total returns when dividends are reinvested
the wealth of a family or couple depends not just on the one person it is very very much a a thing you do together
Weekly budgeting discipline is not about whether you have a lot of money or a little money — if it's good enough for the world's largest corporations, it applies universally.
in the next six hours you will get the financial education that you should have had at school
making money from your money is a skill it's a skill you can learn it's no more difficult than learning to drive a car
the leading stock markets in the world are probably the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ and perhaps the Chicago Board of options exchange
the US model is what has been copied around the world and that sort of anglo-saxon us model of Market regulation is in most exchanges around the world
the secondary Market is essentially whereby companies that already listed you can then buy the shares from the guys who bought it at the initial public offering
stock exchanges ensure that there is sufficient liquidity in a stock if not they will actually suspend trading or delist them eventually
stock exchanges charge a small fee for each trade in addition to stamp duties that most governments collect
if you want to get access to live data for the NASDAQ for example you have to pay something like $2 or something a month as an individual
with blockchain there is an opportunity to do stock trading more cheaply more efficiently at lower transaction costs than we have right now
stop limit orders can mitigate the problem with stop-loss orders which can be triggered during a flash crash when prices plummet but subsequently recover
penny stocks with very low nominal share prices doesn't mean by the way that the stock is cheap it just means that there are too many shares outstanding or the company really isn't worth very much
90 days is typically the the limit
a lot of brokerages I use they actually have that set as standard so it means it's only valid for today
selling is often much much harder than buying
greed it really is just greed and emotion and fear that is our biggest enemy when we are investing in stocks
very very rarely do stocks keep going up like that if they go up like that they typically come down again at least halfway or so
if you have a company that's been growing even if it's growing slowly 2% 5% 10% and then suddenly they have a revenue declining that's typically a big red flag indicator that something is seriously wrong there
cost cutting — when you get companies… they always start to uh you know cut costs lay off people that tends to give the stock price a temporary boost but in the long run it does tell you something about that business that isn't quite right
The longer that Horizon the lower your risk the shorter that Horizon the higher your risk
fees costs transaction fees… that is probably about 40 to 50% of your investment success it's all about costs and fees and how to minimize them
transaction costs… are hidden fees they typically don't disclose them
2020 transaction costs 0.03% which is incredibly low and it basically means these guys did very very very few trades
your fees are higher the smaller your trades are
AT&T has a 6.94% dividend yield, visible by typing AT&T stock into Google
AT&T has basically lost about 20 25% of its value since 2016
A bond nearly guarantees its yield except if the company or the government that issued that Bond goes out of business
After the 2008 financial crash, financial bonds of banks were trading at say 30 out of 100 and then recovered to 70 80 90 levels
Value stocks that don't pay dividends can be preferable because the business is growing sufficiently to reinvest profits and grow faster than a 5 or 6% dividend yield
McCormick is a value stock Felix Prehn owns, operating in food spices and flavorings for retail, food manufacturers, and food service businesses
Growth stocks like Tesla have had PE ratios of 1000 or 1100 at the time of filming
Cash essentially deflates; at 1.5% inflation over 10 years you lose $1,393 on a $10,000 holding
Stocks have gone up 8% plus on average over the last 10 years
at an actual inflation rate of minus 8% you've lost $5,500 after 10 years of your 10,000
Even a 30-year US Government Bond yields only 2.35%, meaning you lose at least 5.6% per year compared to stocks
Corporate bonds that pay a decent return tend to be from corporates that have a decent chance of going out of business
Crypto is something like 2.5 trillion of the world's assets at the time of filming
Value stocks function as the new bonds because they are companies that have been around for 90 years with huge return on capital, a huge moat, and are highly unlikely to go out of business
I don't see the point in owning things that are paying me one or 2% income
Altria, which is basically the US Philip Morris business and parent company of Philip Morris, pays a 6.6% dividend
Colgate sells basically pretty much all the toothpaste in the world and people are always going to buy toothpaste
Chinya Energy Partners has 32 times more debt than equity
A combination of dividends and value stocks is what I would treat as a bond substitute
The NASDAQ does tend to outperform the S&P 500 over the last 10 years or so
Buying the NASDAQ at 11,000 in November 2020 when it touched the 100-day line would have been better than buying at 12,000
My value portfolio does something like 11 12% a year, sometimes 15, sometimes 18%, but pretty much always at least 10 11%
Good companies at present pay about 6% dividend, above that you get into dodgy territory of companies that might go out of business
Selling a couple of shares every year or month is exactly the same thing as getting dividends and spending them
Real estate income is a genuine diversification away from stocks and is likely to still pay you income when the stock market goes kaput because your tenant will still pay you some money
Most people buy at the top of the market and sell at the bottom of the market — that's just human psychology — and that's sadly why most retail investors lose money over time
At $7 per share with $100 to invest you buy 14 shares; at $15 per share you buy 6 shares; at $10 per share you buy 10 shares, demonstrating you buy more shares when the price is down
Dollar cost averaging averages you out to a lower price than if you had timed it randomly, generally speaking
I do dollar cost averaging every week, not with individual stocks but with funds or ETFs such as the NASDAQ or S&P 500
Consumer staples or value fund companies are generally slow movers that return 11–15% annually
nobody times the market right in the long run
Investing in the S&P 500 from 2010 to 2021 would have returned approximately 271% over that period and 220% over any 10-year window ending 2021
ETFs tend to be cheaper than mutual funds because ETF share issuance is handled automatically by software rather than by people, reducing operational costs
ARK is essentially a mutual fund but marketed like an ETF and has fees closer to an ETF than a traditional mutual fund
When buying a mutual fund you buy it from the fund once a day at NAV and pay a fee, whereas when buying an ETF you buy from a seller on the exchange like a regular share
Mutual funds distribute taxable gains to investors even if the investor did not sell their mutual fund shares, whereas ETF taxes are generally only triggered when the investor sells
The key advantage of a mutual fund is active management—a jockey—which costs more due to analysts, research, and company visits but can outperform if the manager is intelligent and well-researched
Felix Prehn buys Fundsmith because it has relatively low fees and is managed by someone he considers intelligent, with fees around 1% per year
An ETF typically has less volatility than a single stock in its sector because it holds 10–20 companies, so the highly volatile ones are offset by the less volatile ones
In consumer staples the whole sector moves in a relatively low-volatility tandem, making ETF purchase more attractive than stock-picking for alpha in that sector
Biotech stocks have exceptionally high volatility because returns depend on FDA drug approval; approved drugs can return 1000%+ while failures go to zero
VDC has an expense ratio of 0.1 to me that is therefore almost automatically a winner compared to the other ones
turnover ratio that basically is an indicator of internal transaction cost that typically funds don't disclose to you but every single time they trade they are encouraging brokerage fees themselves and who pays for that well you do
a huge turnover ratio here uh over 119 versus three well for me therefore VDC seems to be kind of the winner
VDC and FDX have a correlation of 97 so at that point what am I going to do I am simply going to get rid of FDX because it has higher fees and it is essentially the same it moves almost identically
the top 10 has 62% of this fund right so that's really all you need to care about
I think it's a dreadful business because it's very easy to replicate because there are a lot of companies that have the same data and we all have search now so every single property that is on Airbnb is probably also on expedia.com and and a a number of other local sort of competing services
Amazon Prime type thing that's another reason why Amazon's doing that because it makes it very hard for other people to steal those customers because once I'm paying for that subscription to get that discount and that free shipping well I'm going to just buy it there aren't I
Revenue well that's simply all the money the company received right for whatever it was selling all goods and services sold that's the amount of money received
cost of Revenue what is that really well it's costs directly associated with obtaining the revenue so it's sort of cost of sales is another another word for that so stuff you had to spend to get that Revenue so in the case of Tesla that would for example be building the very car
operating margin of 6% versus the gross margin of 21%
PE ratio is really only useful when looking at companies in the same industry and in the same sector of that industry, otherwise you're comparing apples to oranges
A low PE ratio could indicate either a bargain or an underperforming company with no expectations of future growth
EV over EBITDA does not include capital expenditures, which can make companies with high capex look better than they really are
When sorting Toyota, Honda, General Motors, and Ford by PE ratio, Ford has a minus 39x PE ratio and Toyota appears most expensive at 15.4x PE
When sorting the same four auto companies by EV/EBITDA, Toyota becomes the cheapest and Ford becomes by far the most expensive — almost the inverse of PE ranking
Toyota has the highest depreciation figure at 15 billion and is spending 32 billion more than everybody else on capital expenditure among the four auto companies compared
Toyota has 50% more capex than General Motors, and General Motors has only about a third of Toyota's depreciation
Buffett's holdings of Coca-Cola, American Express, Bank of America, and Apple show PE ratios in the range of approximately 20 to 40
Bank of America has a Price to Book of only 1.39
Coca-Cola has a return on common equity of 40% and Apple has a return on common equity of 82%
Free cash flow for these four Buffett holdings: Coca-Cola 8 billion, American Express 4 billion, Bank of America 37 billion, Apple 98 billion US dollars per year
EPS growth for Buffett's four highlighted holdings ranges from 19% to 72%
Apple returned approximately 1,800% since 2010, far outperforming Coca-Cola's 85% return over the same period
Coca-Cola pays a 3.1% dividend yield
A $10,000 investment in Coca-Cola reinvesting 3% annual dividends over 20 years with the dividends compounded at 8% results in $6,000 in total dividends paid and approximately $13,000 additional value from reinvesting those dividends
PE price over earnings 20 to 40 I think would generally be a fair number
for sort of real world companies 40% 80% but then when you're looking at financial institutions you're going to be happy to take less especially if they pay you dividends
EPS growth we're looking here at sort of 19 to 17 72% if it's higher it doesn't doesn't hurt but if it's lower I I would perhaps avoid those ones
if you look at the S&P 500 since 1929 it has delivered something like 9.6% or something annualized
the NASDAQ over the last 20 years or so has done slightly better 10.6% or so
say every month you invest $200 over 10 years you have deposited $24,000 and you got $114,000 for free on top
a 20-year time period uh and you look at the calculator and you look at the um amount you've invested here $448,000 the interest so the free money you got was $85,000 and the final amount therefore is $133,000 and you only save 48
saving $200 a month pretty insane isn't it and I get very excited by this now you might think well I'm not starting this on the 1st of January 2021 so there will be a little bit of spreadsheet advice in here
by the end of 2040 you will be um absolutely uh loaded um beyond all recognition
good debt is asset backed debt so you have a mortgage generally speaking mortgage rates at present up pretty moderate it's not really a problem it's actually in the long run probably quite a good thing that you're doing
if I could save $50 a month extra and uh if I could make that $250 then in 20 years time I wouldn't have $133,000 I would have $166,000 us do so I get $33,000 extra from saving $50 per month
if your credit card debt is 12% or 19% or 30% no other investment is going to give you that kind of return you are just burning money
Most budgets are monthly and it's useless — there is no point in doing a monthly budget.
There isn't a single successful business in the world that does monthly budgets — they do weekly budgets.
A forgotten $5 monthly subscription left running for 20 years would waste $3,339.
Looking at a week of spending you'll remember individual transactions because you did them only days ago, whereas a monthly view obscures small expenditures.
it's a freaking Scandal the government doesn't give it to you follow the money Trail if you want to figure out why
some brokerages especially the more traditional older ones have higher fees for limit orders than for Market orders
if you have a stock that goes up and down 10% each day if you set a 5% stop loss order a fairly good chance 50/50 that you are out on day two
Investors hold losing or declining stocks because seeing a red number makes them unwilling to realize the loss, turning a small mistake into a large one.
There are dividend taxes in most jurisdictions and there are income tax consequences depending on where you reside
If growth stocks are the only part of your portfolio you have to be willing to take very very significant volatility
Owning a highly mortgaged home gives you neither the long-term safety benefit nor the investment returns — the worst of both worlds
Stocks paying over 6% dividend yield are possibly tinkering on the edge of being around, and are often quite highly indebted
Dollar cost averaging will not always give you the best outcome; if you are an investment genius who always manages to time the bottom of the market you'll do better
ETFs do a lot less internal trading than mutual funds, creating fewer taxable events, which is a disadvantage of mutual funds for investors outside tax-sheltered accounts like 401k
diversification for the sake of diversification is worse than not diversifying; financial advisers recommend over-diversification partly because more holdings generate more commissions and trading fees
if you are buying something very Niche you still have to understand that Niche otherwise you can also fall on your face
Airbnb has kind of created an industry without protecting themselves without creating an asset without creating some sort of loyalty
if you have credit card debt or crying out loud do not have credit card debt it is the worst thing to do interest rates are absolutely insane
if you take it too far you will stop enjoying life and you will become a raisin and trible up and hope to have some fun in 10 or 20 years and I don't encourage that
Small recurring charges — like a $5 monthly subscription from a pre-ticked online box — can go unnoticed for months or years and accumulate into significant wasted money.
each stock market has the primary market and the secondary Market the primary Market is basically for IPOs initial public offerings so when a company first goes public they need a stock exchange to essentially tell them how to do it
a Market order guarantees you that you are going to get this order executed but it doesn't guarantee you any kind of particular price
a limit order means I'm going to buy this order but I'm only going to buy this at say $10 if the stock price before your order gets executed goes to $15 it simply won't get filled
stop loss orders basically tell you if your price drops below a certain level say you bought a stock at 10 but you set it so when it hits $9 so 10% less it automatically sells it
an all or none order for penny stocks means the trade will only be executed if you can get a thousand stocks at the same time if there are 500 available but not a thousand the order won't execute
an immediate or cancel order sets a very very short time limit often just literally a few seconds so either this gets filled right here right now or it's canceled completely
a fill or kill order combines the all or none with an ioc meaning either I get the thousand shares right here right now this very second or the order is cancelled
a good till cancel order remains active until you decide to cancel it it typically most brokerages set sort of a 90-day limit on that
A good-till-cancelled (GTC) limit order below a support line can be a sensible way of picking up a bargain for bargain hunters, valid for up to 90 days depending on the brokerage.
A take-profit or profit-target order closes a trade automatically — for a long position, it executes a sell once a specified profit level is reached, without requiring active monitoring.
There are three reasons to sell a stock: (1) it was a mistake to buy it, (2) the price has gone up tremendously, (3) there is a fundamental change to the business.
A fundamental reason to sell is valuation divergence: if a stock's PE multiple has doubled relative to competitors (e.g., stock at PE 25–30 vs. competitors at PE 15–17), a rational value investor should consider selling.
Key fundamental red flags warranting a sell review: declining earnings, declining cash flow, rising PE ratio relative to competitors, declining revenue, and cost cutting.
Investing $1,000 starting capital plus $1,000/month at 8% net (0.5% fee fund) for 10 years yields ~$185,000, versus ~$159,000 at 5.3% net (3.2% fee fund) — a $26,000 difference attributable solely to fees.
There are three fundamental stock strategies: income, value, and growth
Funds offered with INC at the end pay out dividends when paid; ACC funds reinvest and accumulate them, making ACC primarily a tax strategy
Key value stock metrics include: free cash flow, high gross margins, high net margins, high return on equity employed, and high return on capital employed
Five main asset classes are: cash, stocks, bonds, crypto, and real estate
The traditional rule is 120 minus your age equals the percentage of your portfolio in stocks, leaving the rest in bonds
Stock allocation should be split into dividend, value, and growth categories rather than following the 120 minus age rule
Look at what Buffett owns, what Fundsmith owns, or look at some of the Big Value ETFs and go through some of those names as a way to find value stocks
For dividends, you have to look at debt levels, debt to equity ratio, and interest coverage, not just the dividend yield
I put 100% of my money into growth stocks — no — because I don't like the volatility, I don't like my entire portfolio being down 30 40%
Allocation to value/bond-like stocks should be 30 to 80% depending on appetite for risk; if you don't like risk you could make it 80% or even 100% of your stock budget
Personal allocation: bonds 0%, value stocks approximately 50% plus, growth stocks less than 50%
Dollar cost averaging means investing a fixed amount of money at a fixed period, e.g. $100 every Monday or $1,000 every 30th of the month, at least monthly
Dollar-cost averaging into stable funds every single week no matter what happens, with an exaggerated amount in down times and less in up times as an advanced variant
ETFs and mutual funds both hold a large portfolio of stocks or bonds, are similarly regulated, allow owning many assets in one click, can be leveraged, and can track indices
Buy stocks in sectors where you have day-to-day professional knowledge and insight; use ETFs for sectors you cannot be bothered or are unqualified to research deeply
the advantage of ETFs over stocks is basically you can be lazy you get less volatility you can still outperform the market if you pick a subsection of the market with an ETF um it has pretty low fees it is just easier
the advantage of stocks is if you know something about that stock and you've spent the time researching it and that really is the key thing or you have an inherent knowledge of that sector then you can you you can you can really find a winner and therefore you can get a lot of alpha
Enterprise Value (EV) is calculated as market cap plus cash minus debt
that's why Airlines do it because it's a fairly similar service Airlines I appreciate some are better than others but the reason we stick with one typically is because that's where we get our points from our miles from
gross profit margins are particularly useful to look out with growth companies because they tend to not be profitable on the net or the Eed level because they're having to um still hire a large number of Staff they have a lot of expenditures and they're dividing that by relatively few products or services
if you make more cars your gross margin will improve and hopefully your day-to-day expenses your writeoffs on the factory your depreciation your kind of overheads will not go up as much as your Revenue so that's why it's interesting to look at the two separately
depreciation say I buy a factory right I am Elon Musk I buy a factory by all the machines um each year I can write off a percentage of that value as an expense under most tax codes in the world because the machines uh only have a useful life for I don't know how many years so each year I have an expense which reduces the value of that Machinery on my balance sheet and that isn't a cash expense
for Capital intensive Industries like car companies for example IID gives you a lot more insight into um well the profitability if you strip out that kind of oneoff capital expenditure and and the the depreciation and the interest and the tax
EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization — it excludes non-cash expenses to give a clearer picture of actual cash earnings compared to net income used in PE ratio
Buffett value investing metrics include Price to Book, Price to Earnings, Return on Equity, Free Cash Flow, moat, dividends, and EPS growth
Moat means that the company has the ability to keep others out of its business — for example Coca-Cola's dominant global branding position
look at a low price to book value uh one to sort of 12 you can pay more if there is substantial growth
look for companies that have been around for more than a hundred years and that might seem like a silly thing to say but if they've been around for 100 years and they still give you these uh kind of return numbers then it's probably a pretty good company with a probably a pretty good mode
the first thing we need to do is we need to set uh set some goals and those are goals for both parties we need to talk about debt uh and we need to talk about uh compounding um and education
Weekly budgets give 52 opportunities to correct course versus 12 for monthly budgets — four times more chances to amend things and save money.
When a good stock drops 25–30% due to a catastrophic event, buy it and set a take-profit order at 10% above entry to exit automatically without daily monitoring.
If the reason you bought a stock has changed, sell it as quickly as you can rather than holding on to the mistake.
Write down for each stock the reasons you bought it, what you aim to achieve, and at what point you are exiting — print it and put it where you will see it when you look at the stock.
Review your last 10 trades, list every fee paid (bank transfer, brokerage, stamp duty, exchange fees), and compare fee structures across brokerages — an exercise likely to take one to two hours.
Felix Prehn allocates 0% of his portfolio to bonds
Felix Prehn allocates 1 to 5% of his portfolio to crypto depending on risk appetite and time horizon
Use macrotrends.net to screen stocks with market cap at least 10 billion, PE ratio capped at 30, and return on equity of at least 50%, which yields 64 stocks
If you are sitting on the fence rather than picking individual growth stocks, just buy a NASDAQ ETF
On TradingView.com, which is free, set a 100-day moving average on a daily timeframe; when the NASDAQ drops to or below that line it signals a buying opportunity
Make a list of all your assets, what they are worth, which category they fall into, and calculate the net return after expenses and taxes
Invest only an amount you can definitely afford every month—if it's $100 a month, just do the $100 a month—and ensure the vehicle has low transaction fees
Use fvd.putnam.com to filter funds and ETFs by expense ratio below 0.5%, positive alpha greater than 2, to narrow ~279 large-cap value funds down to approximately 4 candidates
If you trust a mutual fund manager, read their quarterly and annual statements, watch their YouTube reports, list their top five holdings, and follow those stocks as if you owned them directly
this is a website called um fv. putut namam pnam m.com and it is intended in only for financial advisors of which I am not one but you can register it's free and once you signed up you can compare ETFs
I print out this the top 10 this is 95% well not quite but it's it's it's the largest chunk of that holding so I look at these top 10 companies
I would recommend listening to the earnings calls maybe not for all 10 but at least for the top five uh that'll take you yeah it'll take you five hours once a quarter but if it is a substantial investment for you I think it is good to do it
just listen to the last 20 minutes of the earnings score that typically the analyst questions and they will ask questions that will give you an indication of whether they are concerned or whether they're happy or whether they're bullish or bearish
Pull up PE ratios, EV/EBITDA numbers, depreciation for the last financial year, and capital expenditure for the last financial year for your top three to four stocks, then compare against at least their number one competitor
if you invest periodically say every month and I'd encourage you to set goals every month don't set them for the quarter definitely don't set them for the year if you set them for the year you will will fail I guarantee it
you can use credit cards and they're wonderful to use but you have to pay the balance of every single month and it has to be an automated payment from your bank account
if the interest rate is significant and by that I mean sort of above two or three% I would focus on paying that off
I would keep this sheet and I would then write next next to it every week I would make another column here and I would call it actual
Write your big financial goal — a million or whatever it is — somewhere you see it all the time so your brain starts figuring out ways to get there faster.
Make your expense tracking as detailed as possible — groceries, childcare, dry cleaning, dog walking — and add any categories not already on the sheet.
Cancel gym memberships you never use and streaming or subscription services you don't get value from — cancel them today.
“timing the market is just not something that most people are very good at”
“it's called fundsmith in case you're wondering”
“capital gains and dividends received or interest from bonds it's all the same it's all money I didn't earn and I love money I didn't earn even more than the money I have earned”
“there isn't a single successful business in the world that does monthly budgets why because they do weekly budgets why because there are 52 opportunities to correct course and fix it”
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