SSIAs

If you’re interested in the stock market....

GROUND FLOOR

Travel agents, kitchen and bathroom fitters and car dealers are preparing to sing their way to the tills this summer as the SSIA money begins to flow into people’s pockets but it seems that some people may have got the savings habit. The financial institutions are loading us up with savings options and some of my friends, aware of my financial past, have even asked for stock market advice!
On the basis that I want to keep my friends I never give advice on investing, other than the fairly boring mantra of keeping it simple and picking some quality stocks, but most people don’t actually want to hear that. The majority of them really want you to tell them about the stock that’s going to go stratospheric overnight, turning the SSIA money into a massive retirement fund and making them feel like moguls.
Everyone wants to find that stock but it’s pretty elusive. However, if you’re prepared to take the slightly longer view (and remember, the SSIA habit got you thinking in 5 year terms) you can, of course, do pretty well out of the stock market which consistently outperforms other investments over time. The key thing is having a plan and sticking to it but that’s what most people find hardest to do. I was having this discussion with an old stomping colleague of mind, Rory Gillen (now a Director of Merrion Capital Group) when he told me about his additional venture, training courses for people who are interested in the stockmarket.
I’ve seen investing training courses advertised before, and they usually come with the sort of tag-line guaranteed to make you feel that after one day you too can pick that stratospheric stock, but Rory (as befits a serious equity analyst!) totally eschews that approach and the tag-line for his course is Determination, Discipline, Desire. The key thing is the discipline, followed by the determination. Most of us have the desire, all right, but we just don’t want to have to work at it.
Anyway, in the interest of doing a bit of footwork for Ground Floor readers who might be interested in dabbling in the stock market when the SSIA money comes through I took myself off to one of the courses to see if it lived up to Rory’s sell.
The company is called Invest Like the Best and they offer an initial free workshop to explain the technical jargon that goes along with markets so that terms which would normally make your eyes water like P?E Ratio and Price to Net Asset Value actually end up seeming fairly straightforward. The seminar I attended is a follow-on to the course and aims to build on your new found confidence by teaching you how to pick a selection of stocks in order to fund that retirement.
The key element, according to Rory, is getting your damned emotions out of the way so that you can deal with market volatility, lower your risk and give yourself some opportunity to correct errors if you’ve made them already. Somewhat bravely, given his background, he suggests that you stop listening to too many analysts’ forecasts (or opinions) and look instead for the facts. This way you will manage to avoid some of the common investing errors such as buying a share without knowing why, or just because you’ve heard loads of people talking about it; or selling it and not knowing why either; or – worse and we’ve all done it – selling a share to grab some profit only to see it rise substantially afterwards;. ILTB’s strategy is about teaching you to select a portfolio of shares, based on some very simple and sound criteria, which will hopefully see you through both good times and bad. They’re not recommending the shares to you, just telling you different ways of identifying possibilities for your portfolio. As they point out, it’s impossible for a private investor to carry out the amount of research you need to subjectively buy shares, so you need a different kind of plan which would be about ‘controlling risk, not shooting for the stars’.
ILTB normally get about 30 people at each seminar and the day I was there, there was an eclectic mix. Some were looking for advice on their future SSIA money; one woman (about a third were female) wanted to be able to hold reasoned arguments with her husband who has controlled the investing purse strings up til now (though maybe not anymore!); some people wanted to find a better way of managing their current investments and some were investment club members looking for advice, as well as one or two market professional getting some extra insights.
I remembered Rory as an easy-going person to work with and he takes you through the course in a very relaxed and informative style, giving information in easily digestible pieces along with some practical exercises to help you along. He deals with questions competently and runs through the whole gamut of investing options, from property to investment trusts, exchange traded funds, managed funds and direct equities.
Everyone looks at the stock market as a bit of a roller coaster ride and it can be. No matter how good you are you’ll always make mistakes. The important thing is that your mistakes don’t leave you with your retirement dreams in tatters. Sometimes a little education goes a long way.
The introductory workshop is free. The seminar courses cost €695, or €595 if you’ve been to a workshops) or you can become an ILTB member and have full access to their website http://www.investlikethebest.com for €299. 
Like Rory, I’m making no recommendations. But the course was both fun and informative and – in case you want to feel the emotions anyway – you get a free stress ball too!

Posted by Sheila on 05/07 at 12:48 PM - (0) ADD / VIEW COMMENTS

Retail Therapy 2

View from the ground floor

Posted by Sheila on 04/02 at 03:13 PM - (0) ADD / VIEW COMMENTS

Women’s Day 1

When he was the US Treasury Secretary, Lawrence H Summers only had to worry about things like the value of the dollar, tax vetos and smaller current accounts deficits than his successors.

When he was the US Treasury Secretary, Lawrence H Summers only had to worry about things like the value of the dollar, tax vetos and smaller current accounts deficits than his successors. Most of us would find the workload heavy and the issues thorny, but Summers generally received decent press coverage and was seen to be reasonably good at his job. Put it this way, the markets listened to him when he spoke, and having market participants on-side is always a good result.

However things haven’t gone quite so smoothly for him since he became president of Harvard University. Just a few months into his tenure he fell out with Cornel West, a leading professor in Afro-American studies. The result was that West returned to Princeton University and Summers had to apologise for his apparent implied affront to everyone in that department. More recently, his talk at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he made some highly inflammatory remarks about the shortage of women within science and engineering, has caused him to put on his apology hat again.

The key paragraph in his remarks tries to explain the problem as: ‘the general clash between people’s legitimate family desires and employers’ current desire for high power and high intensity; that in the special case of science and engineering there are issues of intrinsic aptitude and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialisation and continuing discrimination’.

In a nutshell, Summers is saying that women don’t have as much an aptitude for these disciplines than men and they are more likely to put family concerns ahead of their working lives which is why they’re under-represented in science and engineering. He uses the family concerns argument as a reason why they don’t make it to the top in other professions too.
Cue mass hysteria from the press and from women’s groups regarding the President’s outdated views. Nobody could actually read the transcript until last Friday when it was released and there has been frantic spinning in all directions from his detractors and his supporters to present their view of the man. The question is whether or not the former Treasury Secretary should be pitied for pitching it wrong, or pilloried for suggesting that women are somehow genetically less able to pursue science and engineering.

He did preface his remarks by saying that he was speaking unofficially (though that’s a ridiculous notion for a public figure) and that he wanted to make ‘attempts at provocation.’ He also continually stressed that his theories might be completely wrong. And then he proceeded to dump women into the dustbin of mediocrity.

I do have some sympathy for him. Rather like Kevin Myers in this newspaper who wrote a provocative piece using inflammatory language which in itself became the debate neatly eclipsing the actual topic, Summers had some interesting things to say. Leaving aside the ‘natural aptitude’ theory he also spoke about the ‘high-powered job hypothesis’ which, he said, meant that employers ‘expect that the mind is always working on the problems that are in the job even when the job is not taking place’. And that historically married men were the ones most likely to give that commitment.

The debate here is surely about employers’ expectations with regard to their employees. Initially, people work to earn money. Some people will only ever work to get paid. But others want to progress within a firm, not just because of the greater financial rewards, but also for the satisfaction that doing a good job brings. I don’t, for a moment, believe that fewer women than men want job satisfaction at the highest level. I do, however, believe that a system which makes people feel that they must be continually at the company’s beck and call while passing over those who actually have a life, is intrinsically wrong. But according to Summers more men than women will answer the company call.

He also gave a certain level of thought to the area of socialisation citing the old reliable of girls being caring and boys being destructive. (Not always. I cared enough for the dol I got for Christmas one year to take her apart to find out how the talk mechanism worked.)

Not content with enraging many of the women at the talk, Summers - in trying to be provocative - also managed to annoy Catholics, Jews and white male Americans by highlighting their under-representation in various fields of endeavour. Back when he was the Treasury Secretary, and not allowed to provoke, he addressed the Women 2000 Forum. Then, he commented that if the Sub-Saharan African continent had seen the East Asian rate of improvement in the gender gap in education since 1970, GDP and living standards would be 15-25% higher than they were in 2000. And if the ratio of female-to-male years of schooling were the same, Africa’s rate of infant mortality would be 25% lower.

At that conference, Summers said that ‘education always pays off’. And he also said that by educating girls in Africa you are empowering the member of the household with the greatest capacity to alter the life prospects of generations to come. The cost of keeping girls in school for an additional year, according to Summers, would may than pay for itself in the form of higher income and lower infant mortality.

With comments like that, Summers clearly isn’t the oppressor he’s painted as being. But neither has he grasped the fact that women shouldn’t change to bring their talents to the workforce, industry itself should be changing and adapting to accommodate those talents and reap the benefits.

There are issues about women in business, regardless of whether we’re talking about management or sciences. But they are not issues of aptitude. Nevertheless, not everyone ends up in the arena that they’re most suited for. As Summers might be finding out for himself.

Posted by Sheila on 02/25 at 03:05 PM - (0) ADD / VIEW COMMENTS