What exactly do I get for my money?

Klaus von Stuttenheim
Lima, Ohio

You get unlimited access to our Stock Table, which will tell you every stock we like, the date we first wrote it up, the price at the time of the write-up, and a link to our specific write-ups on each stock. You will absolutely love the write-ups. They are simple to read, because they are written to be both informative, and enjoyable.You will also get our valuable e-mails sent to you whenever we have a new stock we like, or perhaps a change in opinion because the stock has moved sufficiently to warrant its sale, or something dramatic may have happened, and therefore you need to know about both the event, and the meaning. We never, ever leave you in the dark about anything.You also get our “Sitting Around the Table” (SAT) commentaries. We talked about the market, the world and its impact on the market, specific stocks, what’s new, and anything that we think you need to know about. On average, we publish these SAT commentaries about once a week, sometimes more.And don’t forget the GUARANTEE. When you subscribe, if you are unhappy during the first 14 days of your subscription, by all means e-mail us, and we will cancel your subscription without any questions. If you’re happy, we’re happy.

Is there a difference between what you get with a 90-day subscription versus a year?

Fred Dietcher
Boise, Idaho

No Fred, the only difference is the length of your subscription and you save money with a 1-year over a 90-day subscription. The access to our Stock Table is the same; the e-mails are sent to you simultaneously with everyone else who is a subscriber thanks to the way the Internet operates.The Sitting Around the Table commentaries are the same also. Some people prefer to subscribe for a year at a time, while others prefer quarterly. There is the savings, and as you are probably aware, if you have a portfolio, the cost of your subscription may be deducted completely under the tax law. Check with your tax accountant to make sure it applies in your case, and don’t forget the GUARANTEE.

If I can’t afford to invest in all your ideas, how do I know which ones to invest in?

Tom Haggar
Seattle, Washington

You can always get a real feel for our preferences by reading the “Sitting Around the Table” commentaries that you will be receiving regularly, and we promise, you will love reading. It’s very clear what we like, and how deeply we like it. If we think something is going to move quickly because of an event, whatever it might be, we tell you. You will never be in the dark about our stocks, or where we stand.

How long have you been doing this?

Alfred Inman
Atlanta, Georgia

All our lives Alfred, all our lives. Our founder has been doing it for 35 years, and still gets excited every day, when we think we have found a new idea, that the market hasn’t taken advantage of yet. Most of our people have 25 years or more of active market experience. Some of our people were partners at firms that are major household names in this country.

They made fortunes, and retired at the peaks of their careers. The one thing they found was that they missed the day to day involvement with stocks themselves. This is an industry that when it’s in your blood, you can’t give it up. Now they do for pleasure what they always did for your work. They pick stocks.

Before I subscribe, I was just wondering, on average how often do you make recommendations, weekly, daily, Just a rough idea?

Brett Hoskins
Burbank, California

It truly does vary. Right now we’re getting ready to write-up two different “Value Stock Players”. We’ll release them all within seven days. It may be weeks until the next, or it could be a month.

This is what you must understand. To be truly successful in the market, you must not always be committed with your hard-earned money. You must be respectful of your money, it is too easily lost. This means there are times when you should be on the sidelines watching, waiting.

Warren Buffett says it best. He talks about how, when people are born, they should be given a ticket with ten notches on it, like a train ticket. This means you can only make ten investments in your life. You would be mighty careful each time you stamped your ticket.

He also says, “Only in investments can you be like the baseball player standing at the plate waiting for the perfect pitch (the perfect stock) to come across the plate.” Think about it, most investors want to swing at every pitch that comes across that plate. In baseball you would be out of the game with an approach like that. In the stock market, you’re out of the game too.

Brett, if you study our ideas carefully, and do your own due diligence so the idea becomes your own, you should do very well in the market over time.

Remember, we don’t care how much money you start out with, we’re teaching you the art and discipline of investing. Eventually you might be able to do what we do, but you cannot do it as well unless you’re willing to put in the decades of experience we have. Brett, if you have youth on your side, with the magic of compounding, you’ll outlast us, and maybe, just maybe you’ll beat our track record! TRY US.

How do you pick your stocks, and do you ever pick foreign companies?

Andre Van Alt
Johannesburg, S. Africa

Our founder was educated in New York at Pace University in the Honors Program in accounting and finance. He studied investment banking at New York University, and spent his postgraduate years at Harvard University. He spent several years at KPMG, and Arthur Andersen and Co.He then became the youngest Senior Vice President in the history of Lehman Brothers, Kuhn Loeb, which is America’s oldest investment banking firm, having been founded in the 1850’s. He then became a limited partner at probably America’s best-known trading firm, Bear Stearns and Company.What he would tell you is the best training he has, is his experience which can’t be replicated, and then his nose for smelling an idea that is going to work. You can take all the technical analysis and fundamental analysis, and beat it to death. In the final analysis, the stock has to feel right. It has to fit into the framework of your life experience, and then, and only then, it tells you that you’ve got a winner.

Do you do anything else aside from this service?

Helmut S., Frankfurt,
Germany

If you are lucky in life, you find what turns you on. You must find what excites you. Picking stocks is what excites us. It’s in our blood. There’s nothing we enjoy more than a great stock market idea.You have to go out and find that which you would do if money were no object. That’s what you should be doing every day. We have found that, it’s the stock market pure and simple. If we were sitting on an island in the South Pacific, we would still be trying to find out how do you get a stock quote.We do have hobbies, and we make sure we take vacations with our families. You have to live a balanced life, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This means you take care of your family, and others around you. We are not going to save the world, but we are going to do our part.Our world is a very full world. Thanks for your question.

I'm not a big investor. How much money do you need to work with your ideas?

Li Quan
Shanghai

It’s not about money. The sum you invest does not matter. We have a friend here at valuestockplayers.com who taught us a lot about wealth. He’s right when he says that it’s not the size of your income that matters, it’s how much you save and can invest that matters. You must have staying power in the market to make fortunes, and fortunes are made.

Our friend was in on the ground floor of Home Depot, one of the truly great stocks of the last generation. He had money in the private placement before it went public. He’s up 1200 times from his initial investment. Think about this. A $10,000 investment is worth $12,000,000. We’re talking 1979 or so. That’s an extraordinary return.

Li, if you invested as little as a $1,000 you would still experience the thrill of investing. It will also put you at risk. You must put up real money to get experience. These people with “make believe” portfolios are deluding themselves. “Make believe” does not work. We will tell you what to read, how to read it, what to ignore. By the way, our biggest problem today is what to ignore. There is too much information out there. We are the first generation of people to deal with this problem of data smog or NOISE, too much information that crowds out the data that’s really important.

Any good ideas about how I can train myself to be an investor?

James Samuels
Chicago, Illinois

Take a look at our BOOK REVIEWS section on the navigation bar for ideas about what to read. We have taken the time to put together a fabulous set of reviews for different books that are stock market specific as well as other areas that are pertinent.

You will learn how corporations are formed, grow, and die. You will learn how executives manage growth. You will start to get a feel for a good investment and a bad investment. There is very little that will accelerate your personal investment expertise like reading GREAT stock market literature. We have gone through what we think are the finest books you can read. Take advantage of it.

I've been following your stuff a while. You are seldom wrong, how can this be?

Joy Adamou
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Joy, we make mistakes. It’s inevitable. Our screw-ups occur when we go against the grain of what we truly believe. That’s when we’ve blown it. The good thing is, we seldom go against our inner beliefs when we’re writing stocks up for our subscribers.

If you have followed our work for a while, then you know that valuestockplayers.com has come up with some ideas in the fashion industry that worked wonderfully for people who have done their homework on these stocks.

The same thing is true for the toy industry. It’s not hard. We smell the bottoms and then we analyze the financial statements to make sure there are no surprises. By the way, when we say analyze, we don’t mean look at the Balance Sheet and Income Statement. We study them to death, including the Statement of Cash Flows which many analysts don’t look at because they were never taught how to read it. It’s only been in existence since 1988.

We go right through the rigors of financial statement analysis just like they teach in any MBA program. We also read every footnote. Jimmy Rogers, the legendary stock picker who owns Rogers Holdings, said 15 years ago in a class he taught, if you read the Chairman’s letter you do more work than 90 percent of the investors out there. If you read the financials, you do more than 95 percent of the investors. If you read the footnotes, you do more than 99 percent. You have to go for the edge. The edge is the thoroughness of your technique.

There’s a downside to this. We don’t follow baseball until the end of the season. We don’t follow football until December. And we don’t know where Buenos Aires is. Just kidding.

Look, if you want to make the big bucks, you have to study how the big bucks are made. Willie the Actor Sutton was a big bank robber in the United States in the 1950’s. They asked him, “Hey Willie, why do you rob banks?” His response was, “Because that’s where they keep the money.”

Study how the big money is made, and you will seldom be wrong.

All the mutual funds publish statistics about how well they do, where's yours?

Herbert Monahan
Los Angeles, California

Here at valuestockplayers.com we have talked about this issue more than once. We would probably have to have everything we touch audited in order to publish the numbers. We also don’t know how representative it would be. You are far better off looking at our list of closed out positions. This will give you a feel for the types of ideas we like. If you are a subscriber, you can look at the list of the ideas we like, and the closed out positions.

This will give you a total picture of every idea we have come up with. You do pose an interesting question, and we continually revisit it.