Our New Blog: Expecting Alpha.
Perspectives, by Mark Robertson, Managing Partner December 1st, 2012
For so many of us, Alpha is a reality and we want to share. Bookmark it. Share it. Subscribe.
It’s actually a pretty audacious title for our blog. The easiest way to explain “Alpha” (at least in the intended context) is to point out that alpha is basically a comparison of performance versus a benchmark. It’s little different than a relative return (vs. the Wilshire 5000 for example) and the hope/objective is that it will be a positive comparison. For so many of us, Alpha is a reality and we want to share. Bookmark it. Share it. Subscribe.
We believe that our community of long-term investors is differentiated from most of the average investing world because of the emphasis on building and understanding expectations all the while aiming at a defined level of outperformance. We need to reach more investors, helping them to experience long-term successful investing, too.
Expecting Alpha. http://expectingalpha.wordpress.com
About Us: What We Do
Manifest Investing is actually more about what we believe YOU can do.
It starts with EXPECTING ALPHA.
Many of the participants (clubs and individuals) in the modern investment club movement have achieved and experienced superior returns. It all starts with expecting alpha, building expectations for our stocks and our portfolios. The objective is to outperform stock market benchmarks by five percentage points over the long term.
Of course we know that market performance can be humbling and there are NO GUARANTEES. But we seek to stack the probabilities of success in our favor. How? Keep it simple. Occam was right.
The two most important characteristics for any investment are its return forecast, or projected annual return (PAR) and quality. Our quality rankings are based on financial strength, consistency of profitability and relative comparisons (vs. peers/competitors) for growth and profitability expectations.
The time-honored method has existed since 1941 and the underlying concepts are among the most respected and successful in the world of investing.
This is not “just for clubs” and it is not your grandfather’s investing black box.
Manifest Investing is a work-in-progress and represents an evolving focus on what matters — delivering the lessons learned and best practices witnessed while watching legions of successful long-term investing.
We show you how. We provide continuous demonstrations and lessons. We believe that anyone can do this.
It all starts with Expecting Alpha. We know better than to believe in any guarantees when it comes to investing. That said, there’s a lot of evidence supporting that carefully choosing high-quality companies and waiting for sufficient return forecasts can deliver pretty favorable relative results.
One of the purposes of the blog is outreach. Feel free to share the link with friends and family. It’s obviously just a slice, an appetizer of the things we do but we’ll use it to flag upcoming events and share notable stories with a nation of investors. In days ahead we’ll be exploring getting started with a bunch of soldiers stationed in the Middle East. The exploration and discovery are a gift to us all.
Mark Robertson
Mark Robertson is founder and managing partner of Manifest Investing, a source for research and portfolio management focusing on strategic long term investors.