The Irish Investor

It’s been a very interesting weekend for the markets. Lehman gone and Merrill Lynch bought by Bank of America. I am still trying to determine where this leaves us in the longer term. Hopefully the sooner the bad debts are out in the open the sooner we get back to ‘normal’.

Another interesting thing happened over the weekend. I attended the Solas Financial investor workshop. I thought I would include a brief review for the readers.

Why did I attend the workshop?

I have invested myself for several years and I am largely self taught. This is not just by choice but also because there is very little available in Ireland by way of relevant investing courses. There are plenty of courses about investing in property, but I feel that these are 3-5 years to late. Also investing clubs do not appeal to me either; decisions by consensus are always too conservative. This is one of the few targeted stock investment workshops in Ireland. My reason for attending this particular course was to hopefully pick up a few tricks for my investing toolbox.

What was the workshop like?

The workshop covered the following areas:
• Property v Stock investment comparison. If you are toying with whether to invest in property or stocks this will help you realise that in the current market stocks are the clear winner.
• Basic fundamental analysis of share price. Unless you are a complete anorak this section will test most people’s patience, but if you are going to invest in stocks this is information you need to know.
• Introduction to technical analysis. Anyone who has read Mark Shipman’s books will find this interesting. Covers trend analysis and moving averages.
• Brokerage Companies and account set-up. Some useful tips on selecting your broker and account set-up.
• Executing Share Trades. Some good tips in this section.
• Exchange Traded Funds. I am a fan of EFT’s, this section provides a useful introduction.

The workshop is ideally suited to someone starting out and trying to develop there own investing strategy.

For me the real benefit was not just the workshop topics but in the presenter knowledge across a broad range of investor topics. The course was given by Stephen Egan, the Solas MD and he knows his stuff. In fact the course ran two hours over the allotted time as we discussed issues ranging from self directed/administered pensions to the fallout from the Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac bailout. There was no clock watching by Stephen and he did not wrap it up until everyone was clear on the course subject matter.

Investor Tips:

There is a lot of information in the workshop. People with different levels of investing knowledge would most likely focus on different aspects of the course. For me the big lesson was just how cheap you can trade with some of the large American brokers, like Etrade/Interactive for example. Also these brokers offer better share execution. My Davy’s and Worldspreads accounts will be getting the chop.

I also picked up on leveraged EFT’s. The course opened my eyes to the fact that you don’t need to take on debt yourself to leverage an EFT. Some EFT’s are leveraged 2 and 3 times there underlying investments. Effectively the debt is in the EFT and not carried by the investor. This means that the gains and losses in the EFT are much higher than the basket of companies in which they invest.

There were a lot of other tips during the workshop which would be relevant depending on your investing experience. In fact Solas have conducted free independent stock analysis on Irish Banks, which is available here .

What was my opinion of the course?

This is my first workshop of this type, so I want to be careful praising something where I have no alternative reference point. At the same time I have sat through enough boring lectures and mind numbing meetings to know that Stephen was doing a good job of keeping it interesting. Combine this with small class size, presenter knowledge, willingness to run over time and relevant material. It’s a good package.

If you want to more information, here is the Solas Financial Website.

Potential drawback: The course assumes that all participants are computer literate. You will need a basic understanding of spread sheets to workout the fundamental analysis. Also to get the most out of the onscreen examples you should be familiar with standard online tools like graphs and moving averages. Apparently Solas plan to run separate practical classes in future. I understand these will be run in dedicated computer rooms where everybody has there own computer terminal. These will provide a step by step guide to opening online trading accounts and using the information available online. If you are not computer literate the half day course is not for you.

Just to clarify my position. This was my first time having any contact with Solas. They advertise on the Google content network. Google content ads appear on theirishinvestor site as banners on the top and right hand side and sometimes advertise Solas Financial. The ads that appear are determined by Google and not theirishinvestor. In other words I have no affiliation or vested interest in Solas Financial.

I intend to do write ups on courses and material I come across as I go along. If anyone has found a particularly useful course, book or website feel free to let us know and post a comment below. For example Mark Shipman plans to come to Dublin on the 5th of February 2009, I will try and get an article out on him soon.

theirishinvestor