FAP Turbo

Make Over 90% Winning Trades Now!

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Warren Buffet Versus the Growth Investor

By Michael Swanson

I know you want to generate capital gains in the stock market. You need to use a strategy that fits the current market environment and your own personality to do that.

The two main strategies that money making investors make are based on either growth or value tactics. Investors either look for companies that are growing earnings or that have stocks that are priced cheap that they expect will go up in value. Some combine both strategies.

The growth investors buy in stocks that go up and go up more. What makes the stocks keep going up is the fact that the companies they represent have big earnings growth. The companies got new products or are run better than their competitors and build market share, which translates into a rising stock price.

Growth stocks usually do better than other stocks in bull markets, but can fall hard in a bear market. There are some dangers to growth investing. If all of a sudden the growth in the earnings stops the stocks can fall very hard, because investors are all betting on the big earnings growth to keep going on.

The problem with growth companies is that at some point the growth slows down. Usually this happens right as the excitement surrounding the company is at a crescendo. The stock then usually falters and goes nowhere despite the continued good news. What is happening is that company insiders know that the future is not going to be as easy as the climb up to ascendancy and start to sell out ahead of the crowd, thereby putting a lid on any future price advances.

Most growth stocks go up a lot, because people like to bet they keep going up. It is a big momentum play. But when bad news hits then the momentum can switch and go to the downside. So to play growth stocks you have to know what you are doing when it comes to trading and putting in your buy and sell orders.

The opposite of growth stock investing is value investing. The most famous value investors are Warren Buffet and his mentor Benjamin Graham. Value investors look for companies with low debt, a high book value, a dividend yield, a high sales-to-price ratio, and a low price-to-earnings ratio, among other things.

Most value investors look for companies whose stock is trading at a very low valuation due to a temporary market condition, such as low sales, a slow economy, or an extreme bearish sentiment in regards to the company that is unwarranted.

Sometimes a value investor has to wait a long time after buying a stock to see it go up, because the public stays scared and doesn't see the value in the stock. This can even happen in whole markets. Gold and commodities stayed at low prices until only a few years ago for example.

You need to know that it is the growth stocks that go up the most in bull markets, but they fall the most in bear markets too. It is the value investor who knows when to get in cheap and sell high. You have to figure out which strategy you like the most. I combine them both and talk about both. - 23204

About the Author:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home