How Do You Analyze a Stock? No really, how?

Morning guys!

It is Monday, May 4th and popping in here to kind of show you what I’m thinking about this week.

One of the questions I’m asking is, how do you analyze a stock?

So I get ideas. I try to talk to a lot of people about companies that I like, trends that I see happening, but I have no idea how to figure out, Are they actually worth buying?

So that’s one of the things I’m going to be reading about this week: how do I analyze a company to know if it’s a good buyer or not?

My father-in-law, bless his heart, has tried to teach me this like a thousand times. So I’m going to endeavor to learn again.

I’m also reading this week the intelligent investor, which is another gift from my father in law who’s a financial planner. I have picked it up a number of times to read and then put it down because a Benjamin Graham is a little tedious, I find, but I’m going to power through because every value investor, anybody that knows things about finance that I respect. They all say to read this book. So I am going to power through.

So just wanted to kind of update you guys where I’m at.

One of the things I read in this book too was about taxes and essentially with capital gains, if you hold it for a short term, six months or less, you are charged like taxes at normal rates.

And if it’s longer than that, a longer hold, it’s a capital gains tax.

However, you can also do capital losses against that. One of the companies I bought last year, Occidental Petroleum, and I bought it because Buffet bought it.

It was one of his only purchases last year. So I bought Occidental Petroleum and they just, they’re junk bond now. They’re just real bad.

Before they got labeled a junk bond, when the market started crashing, I bought more of them. So what I did was I sold all of that then rebought them because on the off chance that they go back up, you know, I mean, at $150, cause I only have 11 shares.

But I was able to count $250 of losses against some money I made on Apple stocks a couple of weeks ago. So I think that’s called tax loss harvesting and I’m learning still. I’ll keep you posted.

That’s my update for this morning.

So what do you guys do to analyze stocks, companies that you’re considering? What other questions should I be asking? And what books are you guys reading? I’d love to, you know, always looking for recommendations.

I had some great questions. When I first released this, I hadn’t prepped the blog yet to like actually have it go out to people.

But somehow. People found it and asked questions, and I just found them after recording the first part of this. So I will answer them later this week.

But thank you so much for asking , I love good questions. It helps me think. It helps me even have direction to know how I should be thinking.

So keep them coming. Thanks guys.