The following are ten investment tips that many people might find useful:
1. Keep an eye on value – Is a share selling for below its book value? What is the relationship between the earnings and the price?
2. Don’t follow the herd – Many of the most successful investors are contrarian investors. They buy when others are selling and sell when others are buying.
3. Be patient – Rome was not built in a day and companies take time to grow to their full potential.
4. Drip feed your money into the market – No one knows exactly where markets are going so drip feed your money into the market by making regular investments. That way you will average out the ups and downs of the market.
5. Examine your own situation and your appetite for risk – You should not invest in equities if you are the type of person who is nervous every time you read a stock market report.
6. Diversify your portfolio – You must never put all your eggs in one basket unless you have a lot of time to watch that basket – and most of us don’t.
7. Do not listen to your friends or neighbours when it comes to making investment decisions – Your own situation is different from everyone else’s so you should be making the decisions.
8. Do not believe everything you read in newspapers, because things tend to be exaggerated – Don’t be swayed by headlines and look at what is going on behind the scenes.
9. Go into emerging markets because that is where the growth is – Emerging markets have consistently grown much faster than the developed countries in virtually every year since 1988.
10. Look at countries where populations are relatively young – Countries with young populations are going to be the most productive in future years.