Recently, I finally managed to convince my wife to start investing directly using her own account. That is, she now has to decide for herself what and when to buy/sell. I did this partly so that she can directly feedback to me about what features needs to be improved or added to SGXcafe for users like her. I’ll let her tell you about her experience using SGXcafe.
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Unlike Evan, I have no interest nor knowledge of investing or the stock market. Until recently, that is. It’s actually fun when I started to invest. Whatever I know, I learned it from him, or the many books he forced… I mean, encouraged me to read.
I use SGXcafe (obviously. If I started a line of nail polish, I expect Evan to support me and wear it too) to help me keep track of my portfolio as well as decide what to buy, but I have to say – and I’m not being biased – SGXcafe is seriously awesome.
It’s awesome because it’s packed with so much information and tools that a seasoned investor can freely wield to become powerful weapons in investing. But it’s so awesome that I effectively use only about 2% of what SGXcafe offers. The remaining 98% is far too complicated for a newbie like me. VaR? PEG? P/CF??? My eyes glaze over when I see all the technical mumbo jumbo.
Yes, obviously it would be best for me to learn how to read the technical and fundamental data, but dipping my foot into the ocean of investing is overwhelming enough. And if I still bombarded myself with (to me, not very interesting) terms, that might just turn me off investing completely.
So how exactly do I decide what to buy? Two words: Dividend Strength. I like it because It’s easy enough a concept to understand. I go to the Dividend Strength page, and mainly look at stocks that are 90% and above.
From there, I browse through the company pages and if it generally looks good (Technicals section mostly green – no idea what they mean, but green = good), preferably high current yield, and if I like what the company does, then I buy it if the price is one of the lowest in recent days.
That’s my extremely simple M.O. in this complicated world of investing. My P&L is positive (for now), so at least it isn’t a complete flop (yet…?) I’ll have to learn more and fine-tune to see if I can improve it!
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FYI, the above is written by my wife!
Seriously we can’t look at dividend yield without looking at dividend yield and dividend payout ratio as a pair.
Ever thought about investing in Japanese stocks? They have a lot of gems. I got interested in them after reading a manga about investing.
@cw8888, fair point. It would be useful to do that although different sector/company cycle would have very different “normal” values.
@owq, nope, never thought of investing in Japanese stocks. Do not know of good resources to research about them. If you know of any such resources that are in English, let me know. Thanks!