■ I invest primarily in master limited partnerships (MLPs), oil and gas royalty trusts (only U.S. trusts at this time), and real estate investment trusts (REITs), as I believe these asset classes provide me with the best chance to beat the market and earn the return necessary to meet my investing goal. However, I do sprinkle in some exposure to the broader market and, occasionally, the corporate bond market.
■ My investing goal is to grow my money to the point that I can retire early. My goal is age 50, though I’d love to retire by 45.
■ My philosophy on risk is rather complex (and likely the subject of several future articles). However, I think it can best be summed up as follows: I intend to take only
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enough risk as I believe is absolutely necessary to reach my investing goal (retirement). Once that investment goal is reached, I will attempt to eliminate all risk from my portfolio (or, really, all risks that can be eliminated, which does not include the remote possibility that a government would refuse to pay on its debts) and enjoy the rest of my life from a condo in a Colorado ski town.
■ I absolutely love investing and have been doing so for the past 13 years. One of my goals is to become a full-time investor at some point in the future.
■ When I make a decision to buy or sell, that decision is based on a time horizon of a minimum of one year. While I do not know the exact average holding period for the securities that I own, I would estimate that it is probably three or four years. I definitely take a long-term approach.
■ I focus primarily on buying indexes (or creating them when they do not exist) and usually will not buy an individual security unless it is part of a larger plan.
■ I still like the efficient market hypothesis, but most of my investments focus on exploiting inefficiencies in the hypothesis. For instance, I focus a great deal on the open market purchases and sales made by company insiders, as I believe that valuable information can be gleaned from such transactions. In fact, I’ve created an extensive database on these types of transactions and now have a system in place to identify the most promising insider transactions.
■ My approach to decision-making is very methodical, more so than the typical investor (or so I think, anyway). I regularly perform detailed analyses, which usually include heavy doses of spreadsheet modeling, before making any investment decision. My first post on Seeking Alpha will be a sample of one such analysis, as I am about to make a 4,000-word post on my views about BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust (NYSE: BPT). I usually undertake a similar analysis prior to buying or selling any security, though the type of analysis can vary widely.
■ Finally, I do not have a lot of time these days and so my writing frequency, at least initially, will be rather low. I hope to be able to devote more time to Seeking Alpha and my new blog as time goes on.
Best of luck in your future investments!
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