The Investment Checklist: The Art of In-Depth Research - Hardcover

by Michael Shearn (Author)

A practical guide to making more informed investment decisions

Investors often buy or sell stocks too quickly. When you base your purchase decisions on isolated facts and don't take the time to thoroughly understand the businesses you are buying, stock-price swings and third-party opinion can lead to costly investment mistakes. Your decision making at this point becomes dangerous because it is dominated by emotions. The Investment Checklist has been designed to help you develop an in-depth research process, from generating and researching investment ideas to assessing the quality of a business and its management team.

The purpose of The Investment Checklist is to help you implement a principled investing strategy through a series of checklists. In it, a thorough and comprehensive research process is made simpler through the use of straightforward checklists that will allow you to identify quality investment opportunities. Each chapter contains detailed demonstrations of how and where to find the information necessary to answer fundamental questions about investment opportunities. Real-world examples of how investment managers and CEOs apply these universal principles are also included and help bring the concepts to life. These checklists will help you consider a fuller range of possibilities in your investment strategy, enhance your ability to value your investments by giving you a holistic view of the business and each of its moving parts, identify the risks you are taking, and much more.

• Offers valuable insights into one of the most important aspects of successful investing, in-depth research
• Written in an accessible style that allows aspiring investors to easily understand and apply the concepts covered
• Discusses how to think through your investment decisions more carefully

With The Investment Checklist, you'll quickly be able to ascertain how well you understand your investments by the questions you are able to answer, or not answer, without making the costly mistakes that usually hinder other investors.

Front Jacket

All too often, investors buy stocks based on either recommendations from other investors, hunches, or isolated facts about a business they've heard or read about. In doing this, your decision-making process becomes dangerous because you haven't taken the time to thoroughly understand the businesses you are buying and you're relying on the information, or misinformation, being provided to you about a particular stock. Instead, your investment purchases should be based on understanding the value of a business through in-depth research. If you truly understand the value of a business, then you will be in a position to recognize investment opportunities and can more easily make the right buy or sell decisions.

The Investment Checklist has been designed to help you develop an in-depth research process, through a series of checklists, that will allow you to effectively generate and research investment ideas, assess the quality of a business and its management team, and ultimately improve the performance of your portfolio. In it, author Michael Shearn--founder of Time Value of Money, LP, and the Compound Money Fund, LP--outlines the systematic process he has used over the past decade to carefully think through potential investments and avoid common investment mistakes. Along the way, he puts this approach in perspective by addressing:

• A search strategy that will improve your odds of finding investment ideas worth researching further

• The importance of evaluating a business's strengths and weaknesses, measuring its operational and financial health, and understanding a business from the customers' perspective rather than your own

• Why assessing the quality of management-- from how they handle daily operations and long-term strategy to the type of managers they are and how they rose to lead the business--are essential to achieving better investment results

• How to gauge the potential future growth opportunities of a business by looking at whether it's growing organically or through merger and acquisitions, and whether historical growth has been profitable

• And much more

Each chapter of The Investment Checklist also offers countless examples of companies the author has researched, considered investing in, and actually invested in or decided not to invest in. These examples show you exactly how his checklist helped him make investment decisions, and they'll show you how to do the same. In addition, each chapter ends with "Key Points to Keep in Mind," so you can zero in on the critical factors in each set of questions.

If you want to lower your investment risk you need to increase your knowledge of the businesses you buy stock in. The Investment Checklist will show you how to do this, and much more, by helping you follow a concise and easy-to-use framework that will guide your investment decisions.

Back Jacket

Praise forTHE INVESTMENT CHECKLIST

"Every wise investor will keep The Investment Checklist next to their financial instrument panel and consult it whenever they make a decision to buy or sell a stock."--Robert P. Miles, author, The Warren Buffett CEO

"Michael Shearn has written an indispensable book. It will raise the game of every investor who reads it. Fortunately, not all of them will." --Judd Kahn, co-author, Competition Demystified and Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond

When you base your stock purchase decisions on isolated facts and don't take the time to thoroughly understand the businesses you're buying, costly investment mistakes are usually made. Instead, your investment purchases should be based on understanding the value of a business through in-depth research.

That's why Michael Shearn--founder of Time Value of Money, LP and the Compound Money Fund, LP--has created The Investment Checklist. In it, he shares the successful approach he's used over the past decade to generate and research investment ideas, assess the quality of a business and its management team, and ultimately improve his overall investment performance.

Along the way, you'll be introduced to specific "checklists" that will enhance your ability to understand the dynamics of the business you're interested in and the people operating it, value the potential investment, and make the most informed buy or sell decision possible. Each chapter also contains countless examples that show you exactly how the author's checklist has helped him make the right investment moves over the course of his successful professional career.

Whether you're just starting out and thinking about what you want to invest in, or already have a portfolio that you want to manage more effectively, The Investment Checklist has the tools and insights you need to improve your investment endeavors.

Author Biography

Michael Shearn founded Time Value of Money, LP, a private investment firm, in 1996, to devote his attention to selecting and researching stocks and private investments. He launched the Compound Money Fund, LP, a concentrated value fund, in 2007. Shearn serves on the Investment Committee of Southwestern University, which oversees the school's $250 million endowment. He is also a member of the Advisory Board for the University of Texas MBA Investment Fund. Shearn graduated magna cum laude from Southwestern University, a small liberal arts college in Georgetown, Texas, with a BA in business, with an emphasis in accounting and finance. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Austin, Texas.