BUY! BUY! BUY!
Oct 15 2008
Two things:
1. This “download video” is Youtube’s doing, not mine.
2. New wedding photos are up in the gallery.
3. The opinions expressed from here on out are mine. Do your own research before making your financial decisions. Don’t be a dummy.
Ok, on with the show.
I’ve returned to offer you comfort in this time of financial crisis. If you’re investing money, you’ve probably been losing your ass this year, unless you’ve actively managing your portfolio and have been shorting like crazy. However, for the “invest it and forget it” there are a few good things to be had in this market turmoil as of late. A number of quality companies are seeing stock prices that are at or near lows they haven’t seen for 10, 20, or even 40 years. In fact, I’d argue that right now is a good time to do a few things to capitalize on market misfortune and even your own.
I’m not too much into individual stocks (although I do have some favorites that I’d love to buy into right now). So, I tend to let mutual fund managers do my stock picking for me. I’d like to take this time to offer up one of my current favorites. Frankly, it’s a pick I wish I’d found a long time ago. Fairholme Fund (FAIRX), managed by Bruce Berkowitz, has performed pretty damn well, all things considered. While the Dow & S&P are both down over 30% year-to-date, FAIRX has only dropped just over 21% this year. While that’s still a sizable loss for the year, it has outperformed the market. Better yet, it has also shown that it can outperform the market during the bullish periods as well. In fact, it’s carried a 12.5% annualized return since inception. Something I’m sure a number of you would kill for.
The fund is no-load, has an annual expense of 1%, and an initial buy-in of $2500. For those that play the “invest and forget it” game, it could be a great, low cost, pick-up for your portfolio. Berkowitz has shown a Warren Buffet-like vision for the market as a whole. He wasn’t afraid to cut-and-run with a decent profit on energy this spring, while prices in that sector were still rising. This helped to protect against the sector’s plummet starting in mid-July that have seen other funds hit hard. He was also able to foresee the real estate debacle and jumped ship early with a decent profit in that sector, too. Berkowitz has developed a proven track record through the ups of the mid 2000′s and has minimized losses through two bear markets and counting. That’s thinking I can get behind.
If you’re looking to invest for the first time, this is a nice time to start. If you’ve been invested for awhile, this is a great time to lower your current cost basis on your investments and help your portfolio recover quicker.
Then again, what do I know, I am Polish, after all. However, history shows that a market hammering this severe comes only once, maybe twice in a lifetime.
Now, I wonder if I’ll bombarded with hatred if this fund just up and tanks out of nowhere. Oh well.
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