I’ve Found More Triple-Digit Winners With This Source Than Anywhere Else
Earlier last week we did things a little different in an issue of StreetAuthority Daily.
#-ad_banner-#We didn’t tout some big investment you need to jump into before the holidays. Rather, we focused on educating our readers a little more and gave you an inside look at a question that was asked of Andy Obermueller, Chief Investment Strategist for Game-Changing Stocks.
Andy explained to his readers how he incorporates some of Warren Buffett’s investment principles into his mission to find innovative stocks with triple-digit gain potential.
Today, I want to share with you Andy’s response to another question, where a subscriber asked about the best investment advice Andy has ever received.
| Q. In your previous issue, you talked a little about Warren Buffett. It made me wonder: What’s the best investment advice you ever got? — Sue P., Madison, New Jersey A. When I was a kid, I had to ride the bus to a magnet school about an hour from our home. In those days, the Wichita Eagle-Beacon published a “Neighbors” section zoned to various areas of the city. It contained fire and police calls, the court docket and other gripping information. I loved it. And based on the filings at the federal courthouse, I invented a game. Filching a sheet from the large columnar pad on my CPA Dad’s desk, I would record all the bankruptcies and calculate the difference between their assets and liabilities. Each week I’d declare a winner of Bankruptcy Bingo. I kept these sheets in a neat stack on my bookshelves. One day my Dad came home with a friend, whom I call Bob. He had an unusual last name, say, Greengrass. Dad introduced him. I stood up and shook hands. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Greengrass. Is your wife’s first name Julia?” The guy looked at me quizzically. “Why, yes,” he said. “How’d you know that?” Dad looked at me quizzically, too. “How DID you know that?” Somewhere in the back of my mind it occurred to me it wouldn’t be polite to mention where I’d run across the Greengrass name. “Oh,” I said, dismissively, “I think I heard Mom mention her. I remembered the last name.” Mr. Greengrass smiled. “He’s a sharp one, Gary.” Dad kept looking at me. “Yep, he’s something else all right.” I had the sense that the discussion wasn’t over. That night I padded down the hall to my room to find my old man sitting on my bed. He put it to me square: “Your mom doesn’t know Julia Greengrass from Nancy Reagan,” he said. “Spill it.” I walked over to my bookcase and got the folded sheets. “Dad, it said in the paper that Robert and Julia Greengrass filed for bankruptcy three weeks ago. It was the biggest one that week. That’s where I knew the name from. Bob is short for Robert, right?” Dad took the paper and looked at it carefully. He scanned the names. “You got all this from the newspaper?” “The Neighbors section. On Thursdays, I read it on the bus. Then I make a list to see who filed the biggest bankruptcy. It’s called Bankruptcy Bingo. I invented it.” Dad laughed harder than I’ve ever seen him laugh, before or since. His bald head reddened; he removed his glasses and tears rolled down his cheeks. I just sort of stood there. “I didn’t want to say anything to him because I didn’t think it would be nice,” I said. Dad gathered himself. “Don’t worry, son. You did the right thing. Do you play this game every week? With your friends?” I explained I didn’t have a seatmate on the bus, and I just did it to pass the time when I got tired of reading. Dad tucked me into bed. I found out later that Mr. Greengrass was trying to get Dad to invest in some sort of deal. He later declined. (“And I was polite about it, son,” he later said.) The next morning, Dad, per his usual, was long gone by the time I woke up and made it downstairs. At my place at the table was a week-old copy of Fortune, the previous day’s Wall Street Journal, a magazine called American Demographics and an Exxon annual report. There was a Post-It note attached. “Read every word. Love, Dad.” And so I did. The piles would appear every so often at my seat at the breakfast table. Kiplinger’s Washington Letter. The Economist. Forbes. BusinessWeek. Barron’s. Journal of Accountancy, for Pete’s sake. Modern Healthcare. Survey of Current Business. And a stack of annual reports and Merrill Lynch research. I didn’t just read these things, I studied them. I manually checked the numbers in every balance sheet and income statement of most mega-cap companies every quarter until I left for college. My friends knew the starting lineup for their favorite teams. I could name the CEO of every company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I was a budding business nerd. I read every word. That was the best advice I’ve ever gotten, and that’s what I’m offering today. Read all you have time for. Learn all you can. Armed with this knowledge, invest with conviction. These days, I’m happy to do some of your night-table reading for you. I’ll bring you the best of what I discover. And if you run across something you think I’d be interested in, please send it my way. |
As Executive Editor of StreetAuthority, I can personally testify that Andy has carried these early lessons with him over the years to share with his Game-Changing Stocks readers to this very day.
In fact, as a new employee at StreetAuthority a little more than six years ago, it was Andy who encouraged me to read everything I could get my hands on. And I took him up on it. Soon, I would find clippings from The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Value Line or other, more obscure journals, waiting for me on my desk every so often each week.
It was Andy who taught me how to evaluate a bank’s balance sheet… how to apply Buffett’s principles to my own investing… even how to use our in-office Bloomberg terminal (I hear Bloomberg charges about $24,000 a year for one these days).
And it’s Andy I have to thank for leading me to the first triple-digit gain I ever booked in less than a year.
The stock was Liz Claiborne, now known as Kate Spade & Company. How Andy came across the opportunity and what went into his research is another story for another day, but suffice it to say we both enjoyed a nice celebratory steak lunch after closing out our gains.
The point is, we all stand on the shoulders of giants. Stay curious, do your research, and take into account the advice of others who know their stuff. I certainly did that with Andy, and it’s paid off for me in spades, both monetarily and otherwise.
I urge you to check out some of Andy’s research in Game-Changing Stocks. It’s not expensive — a yearly subscription costs a mere $99 — especially considering some of the amazing picks he’s made. Just one triple-digit gain would more than cover the cost, and Andy has delivered more triple-digit winners than any other StreetAuthority analyst. He just spent the last six months creating a report on his “11 Shocking Investment Predictions For 2015.” Any investor looking for outsized growth opportunities should read it. To get your hands on his report, simply follow this link.