Footsteps To Fortune
Table of Contents
The Secret of Personal Wealth
How to become debt-free and develop the savings habit that will put you soundly on the road to financial prosperity.
Creating start-up capital and saving on taxes
Why pay more tax than you need? Setting your financial objectives and developing a strategy for getting there.
Time for some self-assessment
Getting to grips with risk and reward. How to spread your investment risk in order to minimise the impact of financial disasters.Types of investment and their risk/reward profiles.
Mastering the stock exchange
Understanding how the exchange operates, the costs involved, howto choose a stockbroker.
Types of securities and how they are traded
Stocks and Shares, Gilts, Equities, Preference Shares,Debentures, Options, Short sales, Futures, Puts and calls,warrants.
The market cycle
Why markets rise and fall in value. How to turn these cycles to your advantage.
The search for enduring quality
The characteristics that distinguish a Blue Chip share. The importance of consistent dividend payments. The value of market gossip.Trading short-cycle shares. Dividend Yield. Splits can be profitable.
Dividend yields as an indicator of value
Seeking a means of uniformly valuing shares. Don’t confuse price with expense. Overbought/Oversold. Price earnings Ratios. Market Capitalisation. Be careful of declared earnings.
Observing share price bias and developing an index of value
Beginning the initial steps of mixing a cocktail of fundamental statistics in order to derive a means of comparing the value of one share with another and consequently determining whether it is under-priced or over-priced.
A high daily traded volume is essential
The inherent dangers of investing in shares when only a small proportion are in public hands.
Comparing balance sheet statistics
What you can observe by comparing historic balance sheet data.
How profit growth influences share prices
Over time the earnings growth rate of a company is reflected in the price trend of its shares; and why this is best measured by the trend of dividend payments.
Refining the share selection process
Why a very long history of rising dividends is a vital ingredient if you looking for a secure investment but why such shares do not always provide the fastest price gains.
Return on capital employed
Getting to grips with how efficiently companies make use of the money entrusted to them by their shareholders.
Evaluating debt/asset ratios
Understanding capital gearing and when it is smart for companies to use borrowed money. The profitable relationship between mine operating costs and share prices. The importance of economic cycles.
Don’t forget the Auditor’s and Chairman’s reports
It is an essential routine check to scan the Auditor’s report and just as important to compare historic chairmen’s predictions with how the company subsequently performed.
Why you should avoid being stuck in a company delisting
How companies profit from listing on the stock exchange and why you should avoid holding their shares when they plan to de-list.
A safe company has a broad profits base
Companies with widely diversified earnings sources are the best equipped to ride through the economic cycles, but the best share price gains often come from single product companies.
Evaluating a gold mine
How to interpret gold mine production statistics.
Getting started on technical analysis
How to draw and understand trend lines.
Fitting the curves with moving averages
How to calculate a range of moving averages and use them for timing your buying and selling decisions.
Measuring market cycles
An evaluation of the numerous attempts to graph and interpret market cycles: Gann theory, Elliott Waves, Granville, Fibonacci numbers,Fourier Transforms, Kontratieff super cycles.
Momentum-based analysis
Understanding the concept of price velocity and momentum Overbought/Oversold, Relative Strength Index, the development of an efficient Velocity Indicator.
Volume-based analysis
An evaluation of numerous attempts to create an efficient prediction system based on the relationship between share price movements and traded volumes culminating in the development of my own Mass Indicator.
Price volatility
As share prices move towards extremes which with hindsight can be identified as major turning points, there tends to be a widening spread of daily prices which offers a useful indication of pending change.
Putting it all together
The initial steps towards developing a strategy which integrates fundamental balance sheet analysis and chart-based market timing in order to be able to buy and sell blue chip shares for optimum gains.
How to create an index of value
Taking the Index of Value concept to a more advanced stage,noting bias in the relationship between corporate profit trends and share price trends. When it is an advantage to hold high bias shares and when it is not.
Determining when a share is cheap
Low prices do not necessarily signify cheap shares and vice versa. How to effectively value a share in order to be able to spot under-priced opportunities.
Developing a personal strategy
It is important to assess your own attitude towards risk and reward and plan your investment strategies accordingly.
Structuring a portfolio
Balancing risk with reward; how many shares should there be in an ideal portfolio. How to create a long-term systematic buying and selling approach that will lock in value into a portfolio.
Why Buffetology does not work for the small investor
US unit trust guru Warren Buffet is famed for his claim that by locking into quality at the start, he never needs to be a seller. Is this approach feasible?
Gilts and Bonds are a profitable refuge when the share market turns bearish
All about the Bond Market and how it is traded. How a gilt is valued. Gilt options.
Using Warrants to insure your portfolio against risk
Understanding Warrants and how to trade them.
Putting it all together
Understanding that all markets are cyclic, the smart investor knows how to switch his money from one investment to another to safeguard and grow his capital.
The Final Word