How do you organize your investment thoughts?

Question

So as I learn more about investments, I begin feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information I want to keep records of, whether it be an industry list on Yahoo Finance, a stock screener on Fidelity, a list of stocks to research and watch, economic news calenders. While I could bookmark pages, I feel that seeing information page by page isnt good enough and at times i want to see multiple pages at once to do comparsions etc.

So my question to you is, how do you organize your thoughts for investment information? Journal? Binder? Bookmarks in browser? tablet?

Answer 1

When I first started investing some 20 years ago I felt exactly the way you are feeling now.  My solution was to learn from the gurus of investments. A list of some of the books I found useful are in one of my blog posts (investmentsfordummieslikeme.blogspot.co...

The trick to long term investment success is to develop your own style of investment by distilling the advice of the gurus. Once you have formed your own style, stick to it.

I maintain three folders in my PC titled 'Portfolio stocks', 'Watchlist Stocks' and 'Mutual Funds'.  Information about particular companies or funds that I'm interested in are stored in separate folders within the above three folders.

Watching business channels is largely a waste of time which you can better spend in researching companies. Read WSJ, Forbes, Fortune, Barron's at your local library.

Answer 2

Start with the book "Rule # 1" your library probably has

Then, paper trade and then start small in increments to test your theories

Watch CNBC's "Mad Money," BUT DON'T JUMP IN RIGHT OFF

Get ideas and paper trade

"An investment operation," Benjamin Graham's classic book on value investing wrote in his first book, 'Security Analysis,' "is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and a satisfactory return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative."

Answer 3

identify your investment style, including your long-term (or short-term) goals.  know your risk profile, your time horizon, liquidity needs, and any other specific relevant info.  

maybe try being an event-driven investor.   you identify some macro type trend, like for example, all the rural people moving into the cities in china.   so that points you towards investing in china.   so you have a notebook w/a heading 'China'.....then you start to do your research and keep notes, and always refer to your basic tenets of your investment profile and needs.

Or keep notes based on sector.    do you do fundamental analysis?  yes, if you're in it for the LT.  if you have a section in your notebook that keeps 'hotlisted' stocks ...have a column of important financial ratios that you always fill out to give you some perspective on how healthy these companies really are.

you'll get more ideas jsut from reading the WSJ and other good sources of info, but don't spend too much time worrying about HOW you're going to organize your investment thoughts, but rather WHAT your ivnestment thoughts are.  spend more time learning than organizing.  although organzing your thoughts is obv. important.