Monday, January 14, 2008

DEA Value Investing–the human side of value investing

It appears the market is hovering between sporadic good news (Dow Chemicals last week and IBM today) and constant bad news (subprime, weak dollar, inflation). Today, the market is up based on IBM’s good news. Mr. Market seems to have ignored the bad news from Sears–sales are disappointing and don’t bode well for continued consumer spending. The broad sentiment is that the economy has been propped up by consumers. About 2 years ago, the same was said about housing.

This shouldn’t matter to a value investor, but it does. Because we’re not machines, we care about the economy, our jobs, and our surroundings. While we might try to focus on balance sheet assets with underrepresented value, most of us are also worried about paying for our kids’ education, mortgages, etc.

Being comfortably away from Wall Street (almost 1,000 miles), I’m about 25% closer than Omaha, NE. With that being said, the goal is to keep a realistic perspective on things. Right now, I’m watching several interesting companies that seem to offer a reasonable value play. They’re in industries we all touch in one way or another. More on these in future posts.

1 comments:

Valerie Agramonte said...

I am new to investing in the stock market. Your advice is very helpful!