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You will find auctions that offer a variety of items you may be interested in. There are auctions for home furnishings, vehicles, art, and even animals including livestock. Many people are intimidated by the process that takes place at an auction so they shy away from them.

Yet this is a perfect opportunity for you to get some great items for a very low price. The biggest factor is that there will be plenty of other people there bidding on items too. It isn’t just you and one other person trying to negotiate the price.

The other downside of it is that your goal is to negotiate the price of anything lower so you get a great bargain. Meanwhile the auctioneer is continually raising the prices higher as long as he continues to have interested parties bidding on the item. Of course not everyone at an auction is going to be there to bid on the same items.

If possible, take a look at the items that will be offered at an auction ahead of time. Most of them offer flyers listing the best items they have to generate public interest in the auction. Try to show up at least one hour early so you can take an up close look at the various items that will be for sale. This way you can confidently bid on them when they reach the auction block.

It is important to remember that you are purchasing items at an auction as it is with no expressed or implied warranty. If you find an old desk you love and would like to refinish check it out before the auction starts. You don’t want to win it and find out it is actually made out of particle board instead of real wood.

Don’t let the fact that there are plenty of people around you discourage you from bidding on the items you really want. If you don’t win them try not to stress out about it. There are generally plenty of auctions taking place in any given location so you may find the item somewhere else.

Of the flip side of that coin, don’t feel pressured to keep bidding more for an item than you really want to because someone else is bidding on it and you don’t want to be the loser in front of everyone else in attendance. Too many people worry about this situation at an auction, but it is nothing to take personally or become embarrassed by.

While you are taking a close look at the various items you may want to bid on, come up with a maximum price you are willing to pay and then stick to it. If the opening bid for the item is more than you were willing to pay for it then pass the item over entirely.

Even if you don’t walk away with anything, going to an auction is a very fun even it itself. There are real estate auctions, estate auctions, and those that offer a variety of other items. It is fun to attend and observe how the entire process works. This way you know the proper procedures when you are ready to make a bid. It is also a great place to network and meet lots of very interesting people.

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What tenant wouldn’t love the allure of high speed Internet and a computer of their very own? This is one of many incentives that investors and property owners are offering in order to retain or reward long term tenants. There are other rewards that are just as effective and cost property owners a little less in order to keep the tenants such as gift cards to restaurants after the renewal of a lease or gift cards at furniture stores for lengthening an existing lease. Savvy investors realize that an empty house, apartment, mobile home, etc. is money that is being lost each month that these sit empty.

The same savvy investors also realize that by keeping tenants longer they are often able to prolong the installation of new carpet, new paint, and other cosmetic repairs that are often required when a dwelling is turned over. In addition to the costs of these repairs there is also the time problems of these repairs as many of these cannot be completed in the course of a day or two and leave the apartment out of commission for at least a week if not longer. Bottom line is that the time the apartment sits empty is essential income that is lost.

If you do have an empty apartment or house there are things you can do in order to entice renters to sign a lease. One thing that many potential tenants find appealing is offering to allow them to select the color scheme for the walls and flooring. Too many rental units permit only white walls to their tenants. Imagine the benefits of not only allowing them to have walls in designer colors but also doing the work for them. This is a great incentive to many renters who love the idea of the final look but not necessarily the expense or work involved in creating that look. The ability to have the colors of choice when moving in is a huge bonus to many renters that should not be neglected or overlooked.

Another thing that tenants find helpful and appreciate in a rental property are the little luxuries such as a dishwasher, garbage disposal, built in microwave, washing machine, or dryer. These things are luxuries that many find are well worth signing a longer lease and even paying a little extra for each month. Garages and carports are another great bonus to potential tenants if you have the facilities to provide this. There are other enhancements you can make to a property that makes it more appealing to long-term tenants. Some of these would include ceiling fans, a fenced in yard for children or pets, and free cable television. It is the little touches that often appeal to renters and you will be amazed at the difference they make.

By offering your tenants something that every other landlord in the area is failing to offer you are standing out from the rest. You are also creating a ’spoiled’ tenant who isn’t going to be content with what the other landlords have to offer when the time to renew the lease comes around. For this reason he or she is likely to stick around for yet another six months or year until the new lease expires, at which time you, as the savvy investor you are, can convince them to once again name their price for staying and offer yet another beautiful incentive in order to keep your clients happy and in place.

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Two popular terms which often confuse investors are “trend following” and “momentum investing.” Perhaps the most glaring commonality between these two is their blatant defiance of “buy and hold,” the practice of selecting an investment and holding it indefinitely, believing that over time the market goes up, and therefore any investment will appreciate. Although the buy and hold approach has been touted for years by academics as the best method of investing, in reality it has its shortcomings, which are apparent in every Bear market.

Despite being the antithesis of buy and hold, both momentum investing and trend following strategies are predicated upon a disciplined investment approach that’s designed to buy when the price of an issue is increasing and sell when the price is declining. Additionally, an exit strategy is normally incorporated to override the human tendency to hold losing positions much too long. Yet despite the distinct characteristics that these two terms share, in reality they are quite different.

What is Trend Following?

Trend following, in its most basic definition, is a systematic investment approach predicated upon buying and selling securities based on the sustained price movement of the issue. It’s important to point out that trend followers don’t predict the future price movement of a stock; rather they examine the issue using technical analysis to determine which direction, if any, the equity is currently moving. If a bullish trend is emerging, the trend follower will likely buy a position in the stock and hold it until the trend begins to weaken or change direction. If the equity exhibits a bearish trend, the trend follower can short the position, wait until the trend reverses, or merely find another issue.

But there’s much more to being a successful trend follower than just selecting and buying securities. In fact, it can be argued that the most important aspect of trend following isn’t when and what to buy, but rather when and what to sell! Often times, successful trend followers establish a “sell rule” that must be violated prior to selling the issue. These sell rules vary depending on the risk tolerance of each investor, but they typically consist of a trailing stop loss coupled with a confirming indicator. The overarching benefit of sell rules is that they provide a disciplined, mechanical methodology which the average investor should seriously consider implementing into his investment philosophy.

What is Momentum Investing?

Momentum investors are constantly searching for companies that are moving faster than the market. They believe substantial returns can be realized if they find, buy and hold onto those issues for as long as the price continues to go up. The old axiom, “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” illustrates the shared philosophy of momentum investors; those companies with the biggest price changes over the last few months are more likely to continue making substantial gains.

Fundamental analysis plays a much bigger role in momentum investing than it does in trend following. Momentum investors believe that buried within a company’s earnings statement is the reason why the price has been increasing so dramatically. And if that underlying reason is uncovered, the opportunity presents itself to capitalize on that knowledge in the future.

In the case of trend following, investors want to identify where a security may be within the performance cycle. For example, how close to the 52-week high or low is the current market price and what is the short-term direction of the issue? For the momentum investor, the key criteria may be the relative strength of the security versus the market or more importantly the peer group of the particular security in question.

How to Develop a Successful Investment Strategy

Investors often ask why go through all the effort of actively managing a portfolio. The simple answer lies in the proven behaviors of economic cycles and sector rotation. Independent studies have proven that over time the largest percentage of a securities’ price appreciation is driven by the industrial group within which the company is classified and not the performance of the individual company itself.

However, the real reason why investors should actively manage their portfolios is a concept called the “Time Value of Money,” also known as “Compounding Rate of Growth.” Many financial professionals will use the example of how a penny, if doubled every day, is worth over $10 million after only 30 days. A very impressive and eye opening number given the small amount of initial capital outlay. What would happen if instead of doubling the penny every day, it were to grow by only 75%? The investment would be worth slightly over $195,000 rather than $10.7 million. Reducing the growth rate further to 50% and the end value is now $1,917.51. A 25% growth rate for 30 days produces a value of only $8.08.

How does the concept of compounding growth translate into the selection of an investment strategy? Investors who actively manage their portfolios, either through trend following or momentum investing, have the ability to take modest gains and re-invest the profit in other trending securities over and over again. Buy and hold investors are not awarded this luxury since they rarely sell when the price is at the top. Rather, they buy a position when the price is low, ride the position all the way up in a bull market, and then watch as is loses value in a bear market. It’s a very frustrating strategy, equally hard on the stomach as it is on the wallet.

Both strategies, trend following and momentum investing, demand a certain level of self-discipline in order to be successful. A portfolio risk-management system that uses the current market price and equity level of a position and some form of market volatility measurement is recommended. An example of such a system could be a proprietary market model focused on technical indicators, back tested over time, coupled with a volatility indicator. The system might employ either the Average Directional Movement Index (ADX/R), the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) or the more traditional Advance Decline Line, Breadth or Volume indicators.

Taking Portfolio Risk Management Systems One Step Further

One noted management system authored by William O’Neil is CANSLIM. The CANSLIM approach combines both fundamental and technical analysis much like the Core Equity Portfolio available at QMA Investment Management, LLC. The weakness in the CANSLIM approach, along with many other similar systems, is that they stop short of providing a truly utilitarian system for the investor. The user ends up with a list of stocks, all of whom have meet the systems criteria, but no method for distinguishing between the good, the better and the best.

To address this problem, Alpha Advisor Service, LLC created the AAS Rating Score. This number is a time-weighted risk-adjusted alpha value used to rank each of the 1700 investments analyzed daily by AAS. The purpose of the AAS Rating Score is to create a level field to measure all investment alternatives. The highest AAS rated securities provide the greatest risk-adjusted return compared to the lowest rated securities. This approach is superior to other forms of alpha analysis since it is time-weighted, thereby identifying those stocks or funds that are providing greater returns for the risk taken. A tool of this caliber, which is available for any investor via the Alpha Advisor Service Newsletter, provides the means of not only developing a customized portfolio risk-management system, but also a disciplined method of buying and selling the securities within the portfolio.

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