Benefit From The Pullback

The "talk" is now that the markets are correcting from the 50% rally that got ahead of itself. No one really knows what the S&P 500 is going to do each and every day. But I was a lot more excited about stocks several months ago than I am now. IN PICTURES: 20 Tools For Building Up Your PortfolioBuy When Others SellHowever, having studied Buffett since I was 12, I have come to realize that you will likely do better picking shares in quality companies when the market has a pullback and gives you a chance to own the same quality business for much less. Ultimately, the key to investing is to put your money in places where you have a strong degree of confidence that your money will multiply over a period of years, not months.  (For more, check out 4 Tips for Buying Stocks In A Recession.)Be On The LookoutCresud (Nasdaq:CRESY) is an excellent candidate to keep a watch on. It's an Argentinean company that owns tons of farmland that is used to supply beef, wheat and milk to the rest of the world. It has partnershi...
Click here to read the whole Article (external link)

Invest Like You Want To Own

The most prevalent mistakes that many investors make today are commonly rooted in the desire to get rich quickly. The truth of the matter, however, is that the benefits of stock investing are maximized by those who are looking to get rich gradually.                   Think Like an OwnerOne of the easiest ways to succeed as an investor is to think like one. Investors are buying fractional pieces of a business. So those that are really investing are buying companies that they would love to own outright. (For related reading, check out Warren Buffett: The Road To Riches.) Ownership Has Its BenefitsThe first thing that thinking like an owner of a business promotes is that it keeps your investment list short and sweet. Very few of us are equipped to manage 50 businesses, so it makes no sense to attempt to hold a portfolio of 50 businesses. Secondly, there aren't many folks who want to own businesses that are run poorly, aren't making any money or are loaded with debt. Yet the speculative urges of market participants seem to grow during bull market rallies.A business like apparel manufacturer G-III (Nasdaq:GIII), which is seeing both the top and ...
Click here to read the whole Article (external link)

Jeff Saut: The Intrigue of Permanent Investments

Editor's Note: The following article was written by Raymond James Chief Investment Strategist Jeff Saut. It has been reproduced with permission for the benefit of the Minyanville community.Bernard Baruch, Park Bench Statesman (1944), Carter Field write:  Baruch liked gold mines. There is always a market, he pointed out, for their product, and at a satisfactory price. Gold, he insisted, is one of the very few things in the world that approaches the status of a permanent investment. Baruch told the story of a Rothschild who set up a "permanent trust" consisting of five different currencies. By the time Baruch heard about the trust, it had shrunk to one-fifth its original value. "But gold doesn’t yield any interest," a friend protested after listening to the story. "True," replied Baruch, "but consider the fabulous wealth of some of the Indian princes and rajahs. I had dinner with the Maharajah of Kapurthala on one occasion in Vittel, France. Several of us talked afterward about his wealth, and someone said that among the treasures of these Indian moguls were gold coins brought to the East by Alexander the Great, hundreds of years before Christ.”Their gold and jewels had earned no interest during these more than 2,000 years, but they still had their capital. Suppose they had attempted to provide income from it. They might have been no more far-seeing than the Rothschild I mentioned. If they had tried speculation there have been many times in each century that they might have gone broke. No, save for gold, jewels, works of art, perhaps good agricultural land, and a very few other things, there ain’t no such animal as a permanent investment. Even in agricultural land, Baruch pointed out, there is some risk. Lands that made men rich in rice cultivation years ago in Baruch’s own state of South Carolina, are not nearly so valuable now that rice...
Click here to read the whole Article (external link)

Mr. Market Has No Idea Who You Are

Mr. Market's optimism appears to have lost some of its luster recently. That's because Mr. Market can often get quite emotional both ways. Long periods of pessimism can lead to times of unchecked optimism and vice versa. Looking ahead, it's really important to realize that as individual investors, Mr. Market could care less about us.IN PICTURES: Eight Ways To Survive A Market DownturnThe Fallacy of AssumptionsFirst, never assume that a truly cheap stock cannot get any cheaper because it can when pessimism takes hold. It happened back in March when asset rich businesses like farming giant Cresud (Nasdaq:CRESY) was trading for less than $5, despite the fact that stated book value was nearly three times as much and actual book value is probably a lot higher because its principal asset - land - generally appreciates over time. Market history has shown that markets can both overshoot and undershoot in their quest to find "fair value." (For more, see The Madness Of Crowds.) On the other hand when the market was peaking two years ago, names that looked attractively valued from a long-term perspective, like fertilizer name CF Industries (NYSE:...
Click here to read the whole Article (external link)

Cresud S.A.C.I.F. y A. Announces Results for the First Quarter Fiscal Year 2010 Ended September 30, 2009

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, Nov. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cresud S.A.C.I.F. y A. (Nasdaq: CRESY, BASE: CRES), today announces results for the First Quarter Fiscal Year 2010 Ended September 30, 2009 HIGHLIGHTS- Net income for the first quarter of fiscal year 2010 amounted to Ps. 61.8 million, compared to a loss of Ps. 37.4 million in the first quarter of the previous fiscal year, mainly attributable to the operating income of IRSA's real estate business, which amounted to Ps. 110.0 million, and income from IRSA's related companies (Banco Hipotecario S.A.)- Operating results for the quarter showed a Ps. 90.3 million profit, composed of operating income of Ps. 110.0 million derived from the consolidation of IRSA's segments and a Ps. 19.7 million loss from Cresud's agribusiness segments for the first quarter of fiscal year 2010, compared to the Ps. 8.0 million operating loss posted by Cresud in the same period of the previous fiscal year. The increase in operating losses from the agribusiness segments is explained mainly by lower yields caused by adverse weather conditions recorded in the previous season that impacted production levels and sales at the beginning of the new fiscal year.- We have allocated 111,459 hectares to agriculture, a figure similar to that of the previous year. We have increased our own areas and those under long-term concessions devoted to agriculture by more than 70%, and have reduced hectares under short-term leases by 35%. For the 2009/10 season, better rainfall levels are expected, which should lead to improved soil humidity conditions and higher crop yields.- Development of land reserves: During the July-September 2009 period, the number of hectares under beef cattle production in our Los Pozos farm increased to 50,000, and the number of hectares allocated to agriculture in the same farm increased to...
Click here to read the whole Article (external link)