{"id":727,"date":"2013-10-16T10:52:08","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T10:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/views\/?p=727"},"modified":"2013-10-16T10:52:08","modified_gmt":"2013-10-16T10:52:08","slug":"best-the-professionals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/views\/best-the-professionals","title":{"rendered":"How You Can Best the Professionals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"trading<\/a><\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to be a professional fund manager to make good profits on the stockmarket.<\/p>\n

Over several decades of advising people in South Africa how to invest, I told them: \u201cYou could do very much better than the professionals, because you don\u2019t have to follow the crowd timidly to avoid criticism of mistakes, and you can invest in small companies which funds tend to avoid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some private investors have shown themselves to be such shrewd judges of the market that mere rumour of their interest in a share sets professional fund managers on a buying spree.<\/p>\n

One thing all these self-taught stockmarket wizards seem to have in common is that they make their judgements on the basis of publicly-available information \u2013 not insider tips, personal visits, interviews with companies\u2019 senior executives, or heavyweight number-crunching.<\/p>\n

Kevin Goldstein-Jackson, a British private investor who was so successful that he became a high-profile columnist, said his approach was a simple and instinctive one: \u201cIf you like something, check out who makes it, owns it or sells it. If you still like it, buy some shares.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reverse is also true.<\/p>\n

He tells how he attended a meeting at an hotel of the Queens Moat Houses chain. He thought the conference room was dreadful and the food and service poor. City analysts were adamant that the shares were a buy, \u201cbut I sensed it was time to sell.\u201d Soon afterwards, the company collapsed.<\/p>\n

Here are some tips you can use to improve your individual investment skills from an American stockbroker, David Granger\u2026<\/p>\n