# Successful Investing V: Gaining Confidence

Mark Robertson and Ken Kavula together have over half a century of teaching people how to become successful investors. Investing is not rocket science! Novic...

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Mark Robertson and Ken Kavula together have over half a century of teaching people how to become successful investors. Investing is not rocket science! Novice investors need to learn a basic vocabulary and become familiar with reading a stock analysis based on an income statement. The BetterInvesting SSGPlus (Stock Selection Guide Plus) is one of Ken and Mark’s instruments of choice. Learning to READ an SSG is a crucial first step for a beginning investor. In this class they will be looking at some potentially pessimistic or exuberantly optimistic stock studies and deciding how to engage in a deeper discussion of the assumptions, analysis, and conclusions.

Ken Kavula from the Mid Michigan chapter of Better Investing and Mark Robertson, CEO of Manifest Investing, presented the first class in the Successful Investing V series focused on 'Gaining Confidence.' This educational webinar taught beginners how to read and interpret Stock Selection Guides (SSGs), emphasizing that learning to read these analytical tools is fundamental before attempting to create them. The presenters used Microsoft as a detailed case study, walking through each section of the SSG to demonstrate how to evaluate a company's growth trajectory, profitability, management quality, and valuation metrics.

The session covered critical concepts for novice investors, including how to assess sales and earnings growth, interpret Morningstar projections, evaluate management effectiveness through metrics like Return on Equity and debt-to-capital ratios, and understand the significance of PE ratios in stock valuation. Kavula emphasized the importance of looking for stocks with consistent, straight-and-parallel growth patterns across sales, profitability, and earnings, and stressed that a reasonable valuation is the cornerstone of sound investment decisions. The presenters also highlighted that their Mid Michigan Roundtable portfolio has consistently outperformed the market by 4.5 to 7% over 14 years, demonstrating the practical application of these analytical methods.