Can you comment on each stock in portfolio periodically?

**zqin** Thu Dec 30, 2004 3:48 pm

Can you comment on each stock in portfolio periodically?
I believe most of users do not have the same portfolio as yours for numerous reasons.

Some of the stocks are much higher than before when you bought, and kind of hesitate to follow you at this moment because I don't know how much potential they have got after such a hike. Plus company's earnings are changing quarter, so is the overall economy.

Can you comment on each stock periodically, say everytime when the earning is reported? That would be very helpful. I believe you do such things to trace the performance of the stocks, but can you also publish your thoughts as well?

**blast_investor** Thu Dec 30, 2004 4:01 pm

zqin:

This is already provided through Hot List and Blog service.

If you are a paid member of BIRTP, you should be able to access Both. I periodically post my short comments on earnings and news.

Especially, Hot List provides latest risk/reward rating based on current stock price, not my entry price for the model portfolio.

By the way, over the past many years, most of my picks jumped up big. Otherwise, my performance would not have beaten index by so much.
Unless one followed my model portfolio earlier on, there is no way to avoid this issue. Especially considering my newsletter style is long term oriented or value investing based.

I believe most of my subscribers should forget about how much the picks jumped from my entry price. The real issue is risk/reward rating based on current stock market price quote.

A jumped-up stock can continue to rise significantly. There is no reason to believe that a pick which jumped up big over past would be unsafe to buy.

**blast_investor** Thu Dec 30, 2004 4:19 pm

A simple explanation for hot list risk reward rating is like below:

http://www.blastinvest.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=27

**zqin** Fri Dec 31, 2004 2:09 am

I get the idea. Can you point me to your hot list archive? I had hard time finding it. Thank you.

**blast_investor** Fri Dec 31, 2004 2:48 pm

The Hot List archive will be in the Blog board from now on.
Whenever there is change of risk/reward rating, I will post a blog comment.

The Hot List link under BIRTP home page will only show the latest rating. Blog will show all the history and all the comments.

Paid members can post comments or questions in Blog board as well.

Essentially, the Blog board is catch-all discussion group for all the BIRTP paid members as well as my latest comments.

**qfhe** Wed Jan 26, 2005 4:44 pm

But entry price is very important to value investment because of margin of safety.

Take sohu as an example. You bought it at very low price and had margin of safety as protection. So you could hold it through ups and downs. But if a member bought it at $40, he would have lost the margin of safety. When the stock price dropped below $20, it was very hard for him to still hold the stock. He would have been trapped for quite a while (maybe indefinitely, who knows?).

New members need to carefully follow your portfolio. Both margin of safety and diversification must be considered. Maybe you can provide more guidance for them. (And it will help attract more subscribers :-))

blast_investor wrote: zqin:

This is already provided through Hot List and Blog service.

If you are a paid member of BIRTP, you should be able to access Both. I periodically post my short comments on earnings and news.

Especially, Hot List provides latest risk/reward rating based on current stock price, not my entry price for the model portfolio.

By the way, over the past many years, most of my picks jumped up big. Otherwise, my performance would not have beaten index by so much.
Unless one followed my model portfolio earlier on, there is no way to avoid this issue. Especially considering my newsletter style is long term oriented or value investing based.

I believe most of my subscribers should forget about how much the picks jumped from my entry price. The real issue is risk/reward rating based on current stock market price quote.

A jumped-up stock can continue to rise significantly. There is no reason to believe that a pick which jumped up big over past would be unsafe to buy.

**blast_investor** Wed Jan 26, 2005 7:16 pm

good comments.

For individual picks, yes, it is not sure and could be risky without any diversification.

For whole portfolio, BIRTP is relative safe.

For example, SOHU was part of portfolio in 2004 from beginning to end. It dropped a lot. Still, BIRTP performance for 2004 was 60%.

Even more, as subscriber, BIRTP performance in 2004 was achieved relative smoothly without big runup and big crash. you can chart monthly performance of BIRTP by yourself easily because BIRTP is long term oriented with low turnover rate.

My point is, value investing method in general is low risk method and BIRTP is not exception either.

By the way. in BlastInvest FAQ, "how to use BIRTP", we consider the whole portfolio as "product", not just individual picks.

qfhe wrote: But entry price is very important to value investment because of margin of safety.

Take sohu as an example. You bought it at very low price and had margin of safety as protection. So you could hold it through ups and downs. But if a member bought it at $40, he would have lost the margin of safety. When the stock price dropped below $20, it was very hard for him to still hold the stock. He would have been trapped for quite a while (maybe indefinitely, who knows?).

New members need to carefully follow your portfolio. Both margin of safety and diversification must be considered. Maybe you can provide more guidance for them. (And it will help attract more subscribers :-))

blast_investor wrote: zqin:

This is already provided through Hot List and Blog service.

If you are a paid member of BIRTP, you should be able to access Both. I periodically post my short comments on earnings and news.

Especially, Hot List provides latest risk/reward rating based on current stock price, not my entry price for the model portfolio.

By the way, over the past many years, most of my picks jumped up big. Otherwise, my performance would not have beaten index by so much.
Unless one followed my model portfolio earlier on, there is no way to avoid this issue. Especially considering my newsletter style is long term oriented or value investing based.

I believe most of my subscribers should forget about how much the picks jumped from my entry price. The real issue is risk/reward rating based on current stock market price quote.

A jumped-up stock can continue to rise significantly. There is no reason to believe that a pick which jumped up big over past would be unsafe to buy.

**blast_investor** Wed Jan 26, 2005 8:09 pm

I want to say a little bit more about the BIRTP product is the whole portfolio, not just individual picks.

take BIRTP 2004 picks as example, the real new picks was only 4-5 stocks, all other picks in BIRTP portfolio was old 2003 picks.

That is very different from many other newsletter portfolio. Many other newsletter produce several picks per month. Sometimes, it can keep subscribers very busy following the picks. That is all exciting and it feels that author is providing lots of service with lots of work.

However, in the end, the portfolio performance counts, not number of picks or individual stocks. In fact, for the same performance, the less number of picks, the less work subscribers need to do to follow newsletter portfolio.

BIRTP 60% performance in 2004 was achieved with 4-5 new picks only. A subscriber could take lazyman approach to follow BIRTP portfolio easily without any time restrain from regular job. Following BIRTP is not really too much more difficult than investing in a mutual fund. I do not expect this will change for 2005. I do not expect to pick more than 10 stocks in 2005 either.

By the way, it is well known that mutual funds caused lots of cover up rally at year end or quarter end. They sold out all bad stocks and baught run-up stocks in order to impress fund investors so that when fund investors open their quarter or year report they will not find big loss stock in portfolio. BIRTP does not engage in this kind of things and I can not because newsletter portfolio is transparant and is disclosed daily.

Sure, mutual funds portfolio most likely do not have big loss stock such as SOHU in their quarter report. But you can not compare BIRTP portfolio positions to mutual fund positions directly without further research. You never know what they did between quarter reports. And most important, BIRTP 2004 did beat SP500 index and majority of mutual funds significantly at relative low risk with value investing method.

**blast_investor** Wed Jan 26, 2005 9:19 pm

qfhe, your suggestion of providing more detailed instruction or advice is good.

However, there is limit of BIRTP that I can do as newsletter author.

First of all, BIRTP is just a low cost newsletter. I do not provide personalized investment advice.

As newsletter author, sure, I will update and analyze each positions regularly and I am glad to talk in Blog or forums.

BlastInvest also has FAQ like "how to use BIRTP service". But in the end, how to use BIRTP or how to manage BIRTP picks is the responsibility of subscribers. Of course, with mutual fund or managed account, fund managers do this for you. But with newsletter, subscribers have to do this themself for this part.

Of course, there is always an easy way out although there are many ways to use BIRTP. The easiest way is to become a passive investor following BIRTP Model Portfolio with dollar cost averaging method and invest in same proportion as BIRTP model portfolio for all the positions.

Passive investment into BIRTP model portfolio avoids risk of bad picks in BIRTP portfolio with diversification.

**qfhe** Thu Jan 27, 2005 6:13 pm

blast, thanks for your comments.

I've passed the stage that needs help on how to use BIRTP. My advice is to help you expand your business. :-)

**blast_investor** Thu Jan 27, 2005 7:15 pm

I see, thanks.

Expanding newsletter business is really going to be on marketing expertise. I am pretty good at investment, but I am not expert in marketing.

Maybe you can help out by marketing BIRTP and spread the word out. :D

qfhe wrote: blast, thanks for your comments.

I've passed the stage that needs help on how to use BIRTP. My advice is to help you expand your business. :-)

**qfhe** Thu Jan 27, 2005 8:21 pm

Seriously, I do have a suggestion for you to expand your business.

In my local area, I often receive email notices about free family financial planning seminar. Basically they are organized by the agent of some insurance companies in corporation with local Chinese Students and Scholars Associations. They want to sell insurance to the local Chinese community. I think that is a darn good idea for marketing. You have given a seminar in the NY/Boston area. You can try similar things in other local Chinese communities. Because your newsletter has one month free trial, I bet the effect would be darn good. You can also provide some sort of incentive during the seminars. (For example, you provide one-year free newsletter from one participant of the audience; you provide special discount for the audience, etc.) OK, there are a lot of marketing opportunities. All you need to do is to think hard. Additionally, you need to contact the CSSA at local universities. Usually they are supportive. (If not, it is easy. You just need to bribe the president with one-year free service.) Think about it...

blast_investor wrote: I see, thanks.

Expanding newsletter business is really going to be on marketing expertise. I am pretty good at investment, but I am not expert in marketing.

Maybe you can help out by marketing BIRTP and spread the word out. :D

qfhe wrote: blast, thanks for your comments.

I've passed the stage that needs help on how to use BIRTP. My advice is to help you expand your business. :-)