Article written by Sherin Dev; Follow me in Twitter or Facebook
If you play close attention to the article title, it is little difficult to guess immediately about what I meant with that title. You may now thinking or have multiple questions in mind such as what really an investment file is?, what is the reason and use of creating and maintaining such files? How would it help to take successful investment decisions and many more.. Hmmm… this article would be an exact place to clear off all those doubts and at the end of reading this article, you will start creating your own investment file and maintain it to take successful investment decisions.
Before moving to the top and root of an investment file, one should need to know the reason of having such file. Value investing approach is always works in a “wait and see” mode. This means, an investor wait with all necessary information that supports investment in a business to seem whenever the right time approaches to invest in that company to the maximum. First step of value investing is the creation of a list of possible investment candidates. This list would later narrow down to get the best and perfect candidates to invest as final. Such list always created based on the product and service penetration to the market, management efficiency, return possibilities. This is required lots of efforts. Once made such final list of good business or companies, the real work of a value investor starts from that point. Here is the real requirement of having a proper investment file starts.
So, what is an investment file?
An investment file is a collection of information about the company and maintains it separately. Such information can be collected from various available sources and this would include up to date information on company business, management activities, market news’s related to the company etc… and in a day to day basis and maintain it in the file. Information on company prices, valuations, competitors information all would taken place in an investment file. One can use all the possible sources like internet alerts, financial news papers, finance and business magazines, and financial channels, trusted websites to collect and analyze information about the potentiality of the company to invest.
Why should an investor maintain such file?
An investment file is the immediate resource for an investor to get information on a company to support any investment decision making by that investor. It generally contain most updated information on the business, management, financial and market news’s, those are highly worth to invest on the business from an investor perspective. Such file can consider as a meter to measure company and management performance time to time by having corporate action details collected time to time.
Major advantages of maintaining an investment file
One of the major advantages of maintaining a file which ensure an investor always updated with latest information on the business. This would help him to identify best times to purchase or sell the business. It also would help him to get information on competitor actions, sector changes and any positive or negative impacts happening to your company business due to such, if any, which is vital to the business owners to make time to time decisions.
What could include in an investment files?
All available information about the company is required to record in an investment file. Company financial details, annual reports, management decisions, historical information about dividends, product launches, competitor information, debt information and its changes year to year, historical stock prices like the high and lows at the time and after major recessions and down turns, which help you an idea on how low the company prices can reach without any reasons. This is little technical, but an investor should consider all possibilities to get the good business in right price.
Conclusion
Investment file is a vital source for an investor to take right actions at right time. Whenever investing, an investor should have sufficient knowledge on all about the business. Investment file creation should do by each investor and bull market time is the best to start. Moreover all advantages, collection of information would later come as a fantastic hobby of investor which later highly helpful to him. Knowing all about a company help any investor to predict its future easily and thus his investment future too… if you have not made an investment file, go and start short listing your intended businesses or companies and start a file by collect and maintain information about each of those companies.Remember, an investment file doesn’t have any specific model, but it is totally depends on how you are managing it. You can manage it by collecting and printing all details about the company or taking it from various books and magazines directly then put it in a physical file where space allocated to each companies. This can even maintain on a personal computer by creating folders for each companies and collecting information to each.