The individual investor lives today in a world that is praised for its superabundant data explosion, making this a unique time in history. Few have dared to say that it is a world in which understanding has been enlarged or enhanced, or that wisdom has at last come into its own! The founder of Investor’s Business Daily (an SMU alumnus and chairman, and CEO of Investor’s Business Daily) took it upon himself to run against the grain in this information age, and to distinguish all that there is to know from what an individual investor needs to know. In its creation, he used knowledge and his intuitions, not so much to encompass the whole financial world, but to distill from that world only particular essences that would enhance success in investment. New information and in ideas that are not found in any other daily newspaper are presented here to help make sense of the markets and to determine what is really happening.
The mind thinks with ideas, not with facts. An idea alters, grows and often takes a lifetime of experience to comprehend fully. And having a life, an idea can have a history – a past, present and future. It has been said that there is only one method of transmitting thought, of communicating ideas in a manner that somewhat captures the spirit of the mind, and that that medium is conversation.
The implicit and explicit goal of conversation is understanding. Conversations are a forum for the exchange of ideas and have as their express goal to get one’s point across, to make a connection between one’s thoughts and another person. And it is this very spirit that SMU Intelligent Investor captures every business day, in a great conversation with the individual investor.
There seems to be an unfounded assumption that, whereas anybody can read the news, very few can read the financial news. The universal use of information systems and machines, the mystery that modern people have made of numbers and formulas in the financial world. The magical sense of immense wealth that awaits in the markets has filled the minds of potential investors with reflections of things that they believe cannot be grasped. SMU Intelligent Investor dispels the magic and mysteries of making money, and provides the individual investor with all the economic and financial information and ideas needed on which to base a judgment.
All the theories in the world come to naught unless they work, and investment theory serves no purpose unless it can help investors make money, and keep what they make.
The SMU Intelligent Investor guides the investor not only how to predict in which direction the financial markets are going, but also how to acquire and retain profits. The great conversation teaches an investor to evaluate objectively the trends of what is going on in the markets, and yet remain detached from the mainstream to watch the level of expectations, the level of speculation and the level of confidence that form the heartbeat of market dynamics. The market offers advice to whomever is willing to listen and interpret correctly, and is rewarding to those who are able to discover its perplexing ways. The great conversation also teaches that nothing succeeds worse than success in the stock market. It has been said that prosperity in the market seems to encourage optimism and impatience in about the same degree that adversity discourages enterprise and aspiration.
This column is the outcome of a syntopical reading wherein many sources have been read in relation to one another and to a subject about which they all revolve, and from which a synopsis of the subject has been constructed. It is therefore a distillation of that which has already been written in different places over a vast expanse of time. In a sense, then, the references here assembled, and quoted from, is the very heart of the investment tradition, and in these words the best minds tell their stories, often in their own words.
Throughout the history of this nation, investments have been seen as playing a vital role in its development. The investment future in the United States remains unlimited, both for the aggressive individual investor and for his conservative counterpart. The market will always make new highs because it always has! It is my intent that every potential investor have the opportunities of the markets opened and explained, in simple terms, and that everyone gain the best information needed, day after day. This column is dedicated to my vision.
