Some of this ground has, I'm sure, been covered in various threads. I searched and didn't seem to find a good single topic though, so humour me...
I've always been something of a conservative investor. As my net worth continues to increase, however, I am now willing to allocate a certain small percentage of my portfolio to speculative investments that have the potential for a large payoff. So now I need to turn my mind to where and how to find such investments. In what I would dub my 'home' market, speculative investment usually takes the form of small, prospecting mining companies. I'm afraid this is not an area that really interests me. I will try to avoid things that look too good to be true, like investing in premium whisky barrels. I'd rather look into something technology, pharma, or healthcare related.
I'm sure I can (and will) find resources online on this matter - but this forum has many participants, and often these threads turn up very interesting and unusual strategies. So how do you go about searching for and selecting speculative investments?
How do you find your speculative investments?
Re: How do you find your speculative investments?
Why are you interested in tech, pharma, and health? What about those sectors appeal to you? What is it about mining that does not appeal to you?
Why not invest in clean water?
Why not invest in clean water?
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Jason
Re: How do you find your speculative investments?
My speculative interests parallel yours. What we consider speculative investing though may be different. I have never given seed money or acted as an angel investor. I have never invested before or at the moment of IPO. Speculative to me is individual stock positions of companies that are currently trading. And mind you, they have been from any objective standpoint, small positions.
A few pharma ones have worked out. It seems with pharma that if the company is seeking or holds a unique patent, it is only a matter of time before it gets absorbed into a larger pharma because the benefits to management are too great to pass up. They are scientists who are tired of the risk. So the pop is at the time it agrees to sell itself when the share price is negotiated out. They don't seem to have long life spans so its best to find it early in the patent life and the popularity is accelerating. Finding small pharmaceutical companies with one popular medication is not hard. I think the last one dealt with collagen and I found it when my douchebag dentist started offering collagen injections and I realized that human vanity is timeless and the process has become inexpensive enough that average people as opposed to just movie stars are undergoing treatments. It's kind of ironic because my new dentist who I happen to like has the a face that is so taut that she could rent it out to frat houses so they could play quarters on it.
Medical devices, I have had no luck. Especially dealing with eyes. I have no explanation why. But now I stay away from anything having to do with eyes. I probably will never invest in a medical device company again even if it has to do with something besides eyes.
I personally think gaming has no end of sight, especially as it is now played competitively in public with leagues. Kind of like poker, where the better players are stars in the community. They are extremely immature people obviously. I mean who in their right mind would get excited over someone else doing well in a fucking video game, but its big and its international and if people want to act stupid I might as well make money on it. I invested in ATVI which I would think is no longer speculative.
With tech, I took a Motley Fool recommendation with Appian corp. which does something with code that I don't understand but probably everyone else here understands. It almost seems like when building a website because something everyone could do. But what do I know. I had some spare cash in a retirement account so I said WTF. It just came out of an IPO this year.
Speculative is fun if its controlled and budgeted. My DH and I have an agreement that I have to run by any selections first because she has better instincts than I do and that's kind of what this is about.
Good luck I'd be interested in what you do.
A few pharma ones have worked out. It seems with pharma that if the company is seeking or holds a unique patent, it is only a matter of time before it gets absorbed into a larger pharma because the benefits to management are too great to pass up. They are scientists who are tired of the risk. So the pop is at the time it agrees to sell itself when the share price is negotiated out. They don't seem to have long life spans so its best to find it early in the patent life and the popularity is accelerating. Finding small pharmaceutical companies with one popular medication is not hard. I think the last one dealt with collagen and I found it when my douchebag dentist started offering collagen injections and I realized that human vanity is timeless and the process has become inexpensive enough that average people as opposed to just movie stars are undergoing treatments. It's kind of ironic because my new dentist who I happen to like has the a face that is so taut that she could rent it out to frat houses so they could play quarters on it.
Medical devices, I have had no luck. Especially dealing with eyes. I have no explanation why. But now I stay away from anything having to do with eyes. I probably will never invest in a medical device company again even if it has to do with something besides eyes.
I personally think gaming has no end of sight, especially as it is now played competitively in public with leagues. Kind of like poker, where the better players are stars in the community. They are extremely immature people obviously. I mean who in their right mind would get excited over someone else doing well in a fucking video game, but its big and its international and if people want to act stupid I might as well make money on it. I invested in ATVI which I would think is no longer speculative.
With tech, I took a Motley Fool recommendation with Appian corp. which does something with code that I don't understand but probably everyone else here understands. It almost seems like when building a website because something everyone could do. But what do I know. I had some spare cash in a retirement account so I said WTF. It just came out of an IPO this year.
Speculative is fun if its controlled and budgeted. My DH and I have an agreement that I have to run by any selections first because she has better instincts than I do and that's kind of what this is about.
Good luck I'd be interested in what you do.
Re: How do you find your speculative investments?
@FBeyer:
I guess my aversion to prospecting companies stems from the fact that I view the profits of the mining industry as largely economic rent rather than actual production of anything valuable. To quote a Billy Bragg lyric "no-one has any right to buy and sell the earth for private gain".
I would rather my investments be associated with something creative and productivity-enhancing for humankind. Hence, tech and pharma - admittedly pharma has some bad press around questionable ethical behaviour re: patents, etc.
My attraction to healthcare is more of a macro thing - healthcare expenditure tends to rise dramatically as countries transition to become 'developed'. I am broadly optimistic about getting exposure to healthcare companies that have activities in developing markets.
As for water - someone asked in this forum quite some time ago about exactly how to do that. I gave it some thought and came up with some potential methods, but there are a variety of reasons why I wouldn't take that particular path. Perhaps that's worth a different thread. Of course the ways I thought of were likely only a few out of potentially very many.
I'm capable of jumping onto a stock screener and filtering small cap NASDAQ stocks but I was curious if anyone else wanted to share particular tactics.
I guess my aversion to prospecting companies stems from the fact that I view the profits of the mining industry as largely economic rent rather than actual production of anything valuable. To quote a Billy Bragg lyric "no-one has any right to buy and sell the earth for private gain".
I would rather my investments be associated with something creative and productivity-enhancing for humankind. Hence, tech and pharma - admittedly pharma has some bad press around questionable ethical behaviour re: patents, etc.
My attraction to healthcare is more of a macro thing - healthcare expenditure tends to rise dramatically as countries transition to become 'developed'. I am broadly optimistic about getting exposure to healthcare companies that have activities in developing markets.
As for water - someone asked in this forum quite some time ago about exactly how to do that. I gave it some thought and came up with some potential methods, but there are a variety of reasons why I wouldn't take that particular path. Perhaps that's worth a different thread. Of course the ways I thought of were likely only a few out of potentially very many.
I'm capable of jumping onto a stock screener and filtering small cap NASDAQ stocks but I was curious if anyone else wanted to share particular tactics.