FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Before I subscribe, I was just wondering, on average how often do you make recommendations, weekly, daily, Just a rough idea? Brett in Burbank, California


It truly does vary. Right now I'm getting ready to recommend four "stocks at bottom". I'll release them all within seven days. It may be a week or two or three until the next, or it could be the next day.


This is what you must understand. To be truly successful in the market, you must not always be committed with your hard-earned money. You must be respectful of your money, it is too easily lost. This means there are times when you should be on the sidelines watching, waiting. Warren Buffet says it best. He talks about how, when people are born, they should be given a ticket with maybe ten parts to it. This means you can only make ten investments in your life. You would be mighty careful each time you stamped that ticket.


He also says, "Only in investments can you be like the ball player standing at the plate waiting for the perfect pitch (the perfect stock) to come down towards the plate." Think about it, most investors want to swing at every pitch that comes across that plate. In baseball you would be out of the game with an approach like that. In the stock market, you're out of the game too.


Brett, if you study our ideas carefully, and do your own due diligence so the idea becomes your own, you should do very well in the market over time. Remember, I don't care how much money you start out with, I'm teaching you the art and discipline of investing. Eventually you might be able to do what I do, but you cannot do it as well unless you're willing to put in the decades of experience I have. But Brett, if you have youth on your side, with the magic of compounding, you'll outlast me,and maybe, just maybe you'll beat me!
TRY US.


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How do you pick your stocks, and do you ever pick foreign companies?  Andre D. Johannesburg, S. Africa

I have a formal background in security analysis. This also includes academic training in this art. I have studied in depth such subjects as securities analysis, global investing, investment portfolio decision making, intermarket analysis and investment strategies, quantitative portfolio selections, options market and trading strategies; applied technical analysis (which I don't believe in); structured finance, project finance, leasing, asset based lending, financial futures and options in risk management, pricing swaps and exotic derivatives; workouts, bankruptcies, reorganizations, foreign exchange trading, and privatization and economic reform.


By the way, take everything I just said and throw it out the window. My best stock picking tool is my nose for stocks, I can smell them. In the end you must be able to also feel that the situation is right. This is not hope, it's putting the full force of my intuitive knowledge and experience to work. I see very little that surprises me. I have lived the cycles. The ideas we like, just keep recycling themselves over and over again. The names of the stocks change, the plays are the same.


Yes, we've worked with quite a few foreign ideas through the years. Jaguar and Laura Ashly were big winners. When Mexico went bad we were all over Mexico. Our associates spent a lot of time looking at this country in depth after SAB did the financial homework. For those that invested in Mexico during this crisis, the returns were extraordinary. It turned out to be a once in a decade opportunity. Keep in mind, the professional investor will sit there with a bushel basket when the stocks of great companies are being thrown away.  Remember, when and if the end of the world comes, no one, and I mean no one, will have predicted it. But afterwards a whole bunch of people will take credit for having predicted it. When Asia collapsed a while back, we were all over Korea and Singapore.


You will never see StocksAtBottom.com give you ideas that involve very cheap stocks. By cheap we mean companies selling at $1.00 per share, or $ 2.00 per share. The only exception is if the company has hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, and the stock has been decimated down to absurd levels. There are other services that recommend penny stocks. SAB has no interest in such companies. We want to look at big famous companies that have liquidity in their stocks. This means institutions can go in and out at will. The vast majority of the ideas we like are too big for any individual, group, or mutual fund to influence by their specific buying.

Good luck.

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Do you do anything else aside from this service?  Helmut S., Frankfurt, Germany

What is your fantasy about what it is I do? First of all, I raise a family, which is the center of my life. Second, I am constantly in a classroom somewhere on this planet. I believe I spend more time in classrooms, between teaching and learning, than any student I know. At the same time I run a very substantial business that involves financing corporate entities on a worldwide basis. This includes venture capital deals right on up to billion dollar IPO's. When I get in a car to commute, it is usually to an airport to travel to work on deals. I am passionate about stocks. I love what I do and will always do it.


If you are lucky in life, you find what turns you on. If you do, go for it. I once talked with a very old priest. He told me that in his life, he had given the last rites of the church in excess of 500 times. He said the strangest thing he learned is that people near death never spoke about the things they were ashamed of. They always spoke about the things they should have done with their lives. The fishing trips missed, or the traveling with the children they should have done. My friend, get out there and do things. My world is a very full world. Thanks for your question.

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I’m not a big investor. How much money do you need to work with your ideas?  Li Q., San Francisco

It's not about money. The sum you invest does not matter. I have a friend who taught me a lot about wealth. He's right when he says that it's not the size of your income that matters, it's how much you save and can invest that matters. You must have staying power in the market to make fortunes, and fortunes are made. My friend was in on the ground floor of Home Depot, one of the truly great stocks of the last generation. He had money in the private placement before it went public. He's up 1200 times from his initial investment. Think about this. A $10,000 investment is worth $12,000,000. We're talking 1981, 1982 here. That's one hell of a return.


Li, if you invested as little as a $1,000 you would still experience the thrill of investing. It will also put you at risk. You must put up real money to get experience. These people with "make believe" portfolios are crazy. "Make believe" does not work. I will tell you what to read, how to read it, what to ignore. By the way, our biggest problem today is what to ignore. There is too much information out there. We are the first generation of people to deal with this problem of data smog, too much information that clouds out the data that's really important.

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I’ve been following your stuff a while. You are seldom wrong, how can this be? Joy D., Buenos Aires, Argentina

Hey Joy, I do screw up, but it's not often. My screw-ups occur when I go against the grain of what I truly believe. That's when I've blown it. The good thing is, I seldom go against my inner beliefs when I'm recommending stocks.

If you have followed our work for a while, then you know that StocksAtBottom.com has come up with some ideas in the fashion industry that worked wonderfully for people who have done their homework on these stocks. The same thing is true for the toy industry.  It's not hard. I smell the bottoms and then I analyze the financial statements to make sure there are no surprises. By the way, when I say analyze, I don't mean look at the Balance Sheet and Income Statement. I study them to death, including the Statement of Cash Flows which analysts don't look at because they were never taught how to read it. It's only been in existence since 1988. I go right through the rigors of financial statement analysis just like they teach in any MBA program. I also read every footnote. Jimmy Rogers, the legendary stock picker who owns Rogers Holdings, said 15 years ago in a class I sat in on, if you read the Chairman's letter you do more than 90 percent of the investors out there. If you read the financials, you do more than 95 percent of the investors. If you read the footnotes, you do more than 99 percent. You have to go for the edge. The edge is thoroughness of the technique.


There's a downside to this. I don't follow baseball until the end of the season when I watch the league championships and the World Series. I don't follow football until December. And I don't know where Buenos Aires is. Just kidding.


Look, if you want to make big bucks, you have to study how the big bucks are made. Willie the Actor Sutton was a big bank robber in the United States in the 1950's. They asked him, "Hey Willie, why do you rob banks." His response, "Because that's where they keep the money."

Study how the big money is made and you too will seldom be wrong.

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All the mutual funds publish statistics about how well they do, where’s your statistics?  Herbert S., Los Angeles, California

Here at StocksAtBottom.com we have talked about this issue more than once. We would probably have to have everything we touch audited in order to publish the numbers. We also don’t know how representative it would be. You are far better off looking at our list of closed out positions. This would give you a feel for the types of ideas we like. If you are a subscriber, you can look at the list of the ideas we like, and the closed out positions. This will give you a total picture of every idea we have come up with. You do pose an interesting question, and we continually revisit it.


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