We provide a list of common portfolio-related questions (FAQs) from The Prudent Speculator community along with answers from our team.
We cannot provide specific investment advice, and we encourage our readers to do their own homework or consult with their financial advisor.
We understand that it can be a bit confusing, but subscribers use our publication in different ways. Some want an actual portfolio to follow, others want to build their own portfolios by picking and choosing from our Target Price list and/or the stocks we hold in one of the newsletter portfolios, and there are those who simply want one or two stocks to buy at a time.
We do our best to provide a quality experience to all, but the important thing to remember is that the goal of The Prudent Speculator is to buy and seek to harvest a broadly diversified portfolio of undervalued stocks. As long as we are willing to hold a stock in a newsletter portfolio, we have to be comfortable with a new reader adding it to his or her portfolio.
We announce new purchases in the newsletter and/or on our electronic Market Commentaries, while we publish any sales via our electronic Sales Alert notifications. Market Commentaries and Sales Alerts are e-mailed to subscribers and are made available on our Web site, www.theprudentspeculator.com.
We actively follow more than 200 companies, constantly updating our analyses as corporate fundamentals, industry trends and other relevant data change. We utilize Bloomberg as our primary data provider, which allows us to regularly screen a 3000-stock universe for new positions that meet our undervalued criteria.
Given our affection for Value-oriented investing, it should come as no surprise that the screens we construct to search for new ideas, as well as the analytics that we run each day to evaluate our existing holdings, center on classic metrics such as Price to Sales, EV to EBITDA, Price to Tangible Book Value, Price to Earnings per Share and Dividend Yield that historically have proved strong indicators of future investment performance.
We endeavor to determine a quantitative estimate of the future value of a stock, five years from now—our Target Price. We then determine a buy level that has an acceptable margin of safety given the quantitative and qualitative review of the company. All else equal, we are comfortable buying a dividend paying stock at a higher level because the yield will add to the capital appreciation in order to achieve the desired total return.
We part with stocks for a variety of reasons:
We cannot provide specific investment advice, and we encourage our readers to do their own homework or contact us to discuss our financial planning and wealth management options.
For more information, please email pedwards@kovitz.com.
As we are equity investors, we do not rebalance our portfolios into other asset classes. That said, holdings are always under review to ensure we are comfortable with the weighting in our portfolios. If you had $40,000, would you put $1,000 in each stock? That is up to you.
Remember, each portfolio typically holds 80+ stocks, and subscriber experience will vary, depending on which of the stocks he/she chooses to invest in his/her own portfolio.
While not every stock on the recommended list will be in all 4 portfolios, they will reside in at least one. Remember, our newsletter portfolios are constructed with the same methodology. Yes, there will be some differences in the holdings in each, but the same investment philosophy – buying a broadly diversified basket of undervalued stocks – is utilized for each portfolio.
As our real-money portfolios have had significant cash flows over the years, we maintain our hypothetical portfolios to illustrate how various investments might have performed with a fixed amount of money, making no deposits or withdrawals.
Each portfolio is managed using our core Prudent Speculator investment philosophy. The size and the inception date of all four portfolios varies, which has resulted in differences in stock selections, while the timing and amount of cash flows has also influenced the two real-money accounts.
As a reminder, the activity in the two hypothetical portfolios does not represent actual trading, and does not reflect the impact that economic or market factors would have on our decision-making, if we were indeed making decisions according to The Prudent Speculator strategy.
Our Target Prices are simply a guide and not the gospel, while they are under constant scrutiny and subject to change, so we advise those who want to do as we do to await an official Sales Alert before parting with any of our recommendations.
TPS and Buckingham Portfolio are real-money portfolios and, as such, commissions, interest and dividends are included. Our hypothetical portfolios also incorporate income. Of course, a Gain/Loss Report shows only purchase and sale price, and as such does not reflect dividends.
Here are some FAQs about this website and Member Portal. For help, please reach out to Phil Edwards at 949-540-7307 or email info@theprudentspeculator.com.
Navigate to the My Account tab, click Change password and enter your desired password preferences.
Navigate to the My Account tab and click Subscriptions where you will find your current expiration date.
Please send an email to info@theprudentspeculator.com to regain access to your account.
Yes, in addition to our monthly and one-year subscription, we offer a two-year subscription upon request.
Navigate to the My Account tab, click subscriptions and select cancel.
Due to compliance restrictions, we are unable to host our portfolios on our website, however you may email info@theprudentspeculator.com for full access to them.
After you have reviewed your spam or junk folders, please locate a previous email from The Prudent Speculator. Scroll to the bottom of the email and select Email Preferences. Upon reaching the Communication Preferences page, you will have the opportunity to opt-in to your preferred email settings. If you continue to experience issues with receiving emails, we kindly ask that you reach out to info@theprudentspeculator.com for further assistance.
Target Prices are updated and posted twice per month.
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