How to start investing?

How to start investing? Calculations for stocks.

The first question we ask ourselves once we decide that we want to invest in stocks is - where to begin?

Friends will offer advice, brokerage houses will make recommendations and various other mediums publish a constant stream of stock research.
The problem is that finance is a very complex field in which anyone can get offer an opinion and make profits during a few good years, but very few actually survive the bad years when they strike unexpectedly.

Also, almost anything else you buy has to pass standard safety tests, but not financial products. This confusion over safety standards is largely because the safety of a financial product implies profitability, and is a factor of its price, which is constantly changing.

Lastly, there is the common misconception that higher risks equal higher rewards.
High-risk-high-reward is never a viable long-term strategy. It is simply a matter of mathematical probability. Over time, continuous high risk will always lead to disaster, by definition.

So to be a consistently profitable investor, your investments first have to be safe.
Or in other words, in investing, safety and profits mean the same thing.
Lack of one automatically implies lack of the other.

Benjamin Graham

The world's most successful investor, and one of it's richest people, is Warren Buffett.
Benjamin Graham was Buffett's professor and mentor at Columbia Business School (and of many other super investors as well).
Buffett attributes his success almost completely to Graham's teachings, the central principle of which Graham called "The Margin of Safety".

GV simply applies Graham's calculations to the entire stock market (all 4000 stocks in the S&P Total Market Index).
So instead of a few specific stock recommendations, what you get is a verifiable list of ALL stocks meeting the safety/profitability standards of the Guru of legendary investors himself, calculated at their current price.

So all that remains is for you to make a list of the best of them, verify their analysis yourself, and begin investing.

Unraveling NYSE and NASDAQ with Warren Buffett's Mentor

The Enigmatic Market

The stock market is a dangerous place.

1. Stock brokers profit from each trade and are always encouraging more trading activity.

2. A lot of companies are not of very high investment grade and try to look better by highlighting irrelevant numbers.

3. Impatient speculators keep trying to follow the market futilely and further add add to the confusion. They keep getting wiped out, but are replaced by new generations of speculators.

Warren Buffett is widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th century.

Benjamin Graham was his professor and mentor. Buffett has recommended Graham's investing approach again and again over the years, which basically consisted of applying minimum conditions of earnings, assets and reliability to companies before investing in them.

Data Warehousing Graham

GV applies Graham's conditions to all 4000 NYSE and NASDAQ stocks.

Each stock is:

1. Assigned a Graham grade as as Defensive, Enterprising or NCAV; depending on how sound the company is.

2. Assigned a calculated Graham price, which is successively lower for each grade of stock.

3. Given a "Buy" or "Do not buy" rating, depending on whether the market price is less than the Graham price.

See Graham's calculations and GV for complete details.

The Advantages

While completely random in the short term, stock markets are extremely profitable in the long term; historically, even more profitable than land and gold.

Following Graham's investment approach will help you avoid most common investing mistakes such as:

1. Looking at irrelevant numbers.

2. Buying bad stocks that are temporarily popular.

3. Or even buying good stocks when the market is already overpriced.

Use GV's screeners to grow your investments safely and profitably, following the principles of the World's most respected investors.

Go to the Graham screener to see see all 4000 NYSE and NASDAQ stocks graded as per Graham's calculations.

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