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Two year anniversary

valuegeek — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:03:28 +0000

Its been slightly more than two years since I started this blog at the suggestion of my wife. I have stuck to my principle of providing original content and stock research rather than up the frequency of my posts and providing second-hand links or garbage. I am a subscriber to the slow blogging philosophy, and feel that this philosophy is more appropriate for medium- to long-term value investors. My posts have a tendency to be long and meandering, and are not suited for the attention span of the typical online reader. The price I pay for this is to be consigned to a negligible role in the blogosphere.

Still, I am happy that I started the blog. The past two years have brought me much knowledge about my own investing strengths and weaknesses, as well as technical knowledge about how to use WordPress and run a blog. To recoup the costs of running the blog, I have used Google Adsense advertising on my site, and recently added a tip jar. Over two years, my earnings from the blog totals less than $50, which is barely enough to cover hosting expenses. However, I have built up a very small base of readers, and am thinking about moving to an ISP with better bandwidth if the increased ad revenue allows me to.

Far more valuable to me are the advice and ideas I get from commenters and fellow bloggers. I have also recently added a blogroll, and the first two entries are fellow bloggers with which I’ve had very fruitful interactions. From Old School Value, I’ve obtained the investment idea of GEOY, which has already given me returns of over a thousand dollars (disclaimer : I still have a position in GEOY). From TMWTFS, I’ve obtained the RCI investment idea, which has given me several hundred dollars in put writing, as well as a new appreciation for Canadian stocks.

In the coming year, I aim to find more investment ideas through conversations in the blogosphere, as well as have others critically look at my own investment ideas. Hopefully, 2009 will prove to be a good year for both investing and blogging.

Blogvesting revived

valuegeek — Sat, 31 May 2008 20:05:58 +0000

I hadn’t been researching or writing about investing for quite a while, as shown by the complete lack of posts for the past half-year on this blog. A sudden intensification of project activity at work, the poor investing climate in general, and the trauma of watching my biggest position disintegrate in particular, have all conspired to keep me from writing. However, things have taken a turn for the better recently. The crunch at work has abated (somewhat), the pain of my investing misadventure has (almost) faded, and it now appears that there is a decent chance that the recession will be mild. Most importantly, I have decided that the solution to my investing problems is not to bury my head in the sand, but rather to work harder, and correct past mistakes.

The past few months have shown me the value of diversification. While my financial companies have crumbled, stocks which have increasing international exposure (WMT and DELL) or are linked to commodities (e.g TX and MEOH) have done better. I had previously tried to limit my portfolio to only 10 positions, believing that 10 well-researched positions are better than a more diversified portfolio. However, it is apparent that I am perhaps not good enough to run such a concentrated portfolio just yet. In the near future, I expect to step up on stock research and expand my portfolio to 20-25 stocks. I will also begin to blog more frequently, including even stocks that I take a pass on, and reviews of investing books I like, as well as my general thoughts on investment.

Writing helps me think better. Hopefully, writing will help me invest better too.

Akismet and PageRank

valuegeek — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 21:23:41 +0000

Did some additional site maintenance tasks today. For unknown reasons, the reCAPTCHA plugin is not stopping spam comments on one of my posts. Only that particular post is affected; non of my other entries seem to be getting swamped by comments. In frustration, I decided to apply for an API key at wordpress.com and activate Akismet, yet another spam catching service. Let’s see how effective Akismet is.

A commenter also inquired about my PageRank and Alexa Rank. Being new to the blogging world, this is the first time I’ve heard about AlexaRank. A few minutes of Googling revealed that Alexa Rank is a pure indicator of traffic volume. It also revealed two tools for checking the PageRank and Alexa Rank of a site, namely www.timlua.com and www.smartpagerank.com. Not surprisingly, blogvesting.com currently has a PageRank and Alexa Rank of zero. Most bloggers say it takes anywhere from 1-2 years for a site to begin to attract a significant amount of traffic, so I’m not particularly distressed by this. I wish I could say the same thing about my stock investments, given the recent market volatility. Still, ability to stomach market corrections is part and parcel of investing.

My blog thus far

valuegeek — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 16:02:35 +0000

Its been a pretty hectic few months for me. And I’ve failed miserably in my initial aim of writing 1-2 posts per week. This is due mainly to my academic instinct of not putting anything in print until I’m sure I’m absolutely correct. In practice, this means the posts I write tend to be long and rambling and full of information justifying my thesis. In the future, I’ll try and switch to a most digestible style of writing, doing short snippets of thoughts, and see if I can’t meet my 1-2 posts per week aim.

As an aside, I just installed the reCAPTCHA plugin to deal with the huge amount of comment spam. Let’s see if that actually works.

Inaugural entry

valuegeek — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 01:33:21 +0000

I am a neuroscientist by day, and an amateur stock-picker on weekends. I have been investing for about 3 years now (circa 2006), and my fundamental approach is a value-oriented buy-and-hold strategy. I started this blog when I found that there is a dearth of information about value investing on the web. Most of the discussion on message boards and popular discussion sites are fragmented and incomplete at best, and downright scams at worst. The few bits of quality discussion is sequestered in subscription-only boards.

On this blog, I aim to provide quality stock analyses and articles about value investing strategies. My main motivation is that the need to provide material for this blog will continually hone my investment skills. I have also posted my personal portfolio here (accurate to the last week or so), so that you can check to see what stocks I currently own. I put my money where my mouth is, so you can expect that I have a position in any stock that I favorably review.

In return, I hope that readers like you will post comments sharing your views and ideas, so that we can all benefit. Together, we can all become better stock-pickers, for fun and profit.

Initially, I expect to be publishing a post every couple of days, drawing from my accumulated material over the years. Eventually, I expect to be slowing down to publishing once a week.