Advice to Investors

February 18, 2009

In the midsts of this economic crisis, people are worried about what the future may hold for them. We asked this very question during our portfolio manager interviews here at TWST: what advice do they have for investors for the immediate future? Here’s what our portfolio managers said:

  1.  Jeffrey Auxier, Auxier Asset Management (Long-Term Value Investing)- “I think they should understand the perils of borrowed money and realize that it’s great on the upside, but it can totally take you out on the downside. I think investing requires commitment to voracious research. It’s not looking at quotes on a screen, it’s looking at businesses and being a business analyst. It is looking at businesses in their entirety, asking, what makes a good business? What makes a good management? What’s an enduring business? What business has been around for 50, 100 years? Why is that?”
  2. Lance Helfert, West Coast Asset Management (entrepreneurial investing)- “I think that investors really need to use their own eyes and not their ears. We’ve seen a lot of scandals in the past six months and if an investor can just use their eyes and say, “I shop at this grocery store” and “I buy this product” and just simplify everything they do and really understand what they buy, I think that’s a good way to go about investing in this environment.”
  3. Martin Anstee, Stone Asset Management (Dividend Growth & Income)- “In simple terms, if everyone else is just thinking small, you think big. If everybody else is disowning stocks, now is probably the time to be buying them. We cannot promise that we are at the bottom, but we do think the worst is over, although we may have to touch the lows we saw in November 2008 again. If you take a longer-term view, this will turn out to have been an excellent time to buy stocks. Be patient, pick your spots and buy the stocks and put them away. In five years time, you are going to look back and say, “I am glad I bought stocks, that was the right time to do it.”

For the complete Investing Strategies report, including complete interviews with each of these portfolio managers giving a general outlook for 2009, and stock picks, click here.