Help me to Retire

Just thought I’d quickly post this link to Fat Prophets review of Telstra. They think it’s a good deal, and I don’t think it looks too bad myself.

Check out this page for all the details. 

The Investors Club is an Australian property investing club that is organised to help you reach your property investing goals. To join the club is free, and to view the current properties available all you have to do is put in a request to see how much you can borrow with club loans ( no strings attached).
The idea of the Investors Club is that they locate high growth property with decent rent returns at a pre-negotiated price. The price is what I find is the only small let down with the Investors Club. As it can’t be negotiated, it’s take it or leave it, often leaving you paying slightly too much. But the club does need to make money to provide all the services it does for you and this is where they make it, in their commissions on sales. The club can often get a bit better price anyway due to being able to offer quick sales to vendors as they can present the property to the thousands of Investors Club members and have a buyer buy 4pm the next day.
The club offers many services to members including a leasing department, maintenance, insurance department, loans and legal support. It is these services and ongoing support from the club which is of great value. Investors Club property’s also have a much lower rental vacancy rate than a non member property’s.

The club holds meetings around the country so you can learn first hand how the club works and what it can do for you. It’s also great to spend time with like minded people and throw some questions around.

The core principles behind The Investors Club plan are:

1. Each investment property must involve minimal cash outlay;
2. Property selection is critical;
3. Every property must be as close as possible to positive cashflow from day one; and
4. Never, never sell.

The Club uses the motto “Never, Never Sell” as your retirement plan invloves living off the equity built up in your properties. As you will see when you go to a meeting, once you have enough properties, you can live off it indeffinetly!

Check out the Investors Club.

Are you ready to take advantage of the opportunities 2007 will bring? Bill Zheng & Michael Yardney are having their last property investment workshops for the year in November in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Cost $79 but you get a few goodies with that plus a full days worth of great info. I went to the last one these 2 guys did together in Brisbane in July and it really got me excited.

Bill will be talking about Property Finance, Investment Philosophy & Wealth Psychology and Michael, Property Selection, Market Trends and Investment Philosophy.

Click here to book a ticket or read more info, I highly reccommend it.

Here’s an interesting article I came across today, have a read -

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Source - Deppro newsletter

The significance of the baby boomers in the Australian property investment market is underlined by new figures released by DEPPRO.According to Paul Bennion, Managing Director of DEPPRO, some 50% or around half of all property depreciation reports prepared by DEPPRO are for baby boomer investors. “Baby boomers have been very active in all the markets now serviced by DEPPRO throughout Australia,” Mr Bennion said. “A growing number of baby boomers in Australia now view property investment as a low risk way of building wealth for their retirement compared to the stock market or even superannuation,” he said. “Many baby boomers have been attracted to buying investment properties because they can leverage the large amounts of equity they have in their owner occupier homes to organise home loans in excess of $1 million to purchase several investment properties. “For many baby boomers, property investment is now a financial imperative because a recent survey indicated that less than 10% of all baby boomers have more than $100,000 in superannuation. “This financial imperative is further underlined with the year of baby boomers (people born between 1946 to 1965) turning 60 years of age during 2006,” Mr Bennion said. “DEPPRO is finding that baby boomers are now particularly active in the ‘red hot’ property markets of the Northern Territory and Western Australia,” he said. “For example, more than 65% of depreciation reports for property investors in WA which are prepared by DEPPRO are for baby boomer investors.
Paul Bennion - Managing Director of DEPPRO - Depreciation Specialists

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There sure are a lot of Baby Boomers out there that will be relying on the government for assistance! Do yourself a favour while you still have time, get into property! The next property cycle is already upon us. Prepare now, do your research and look into living off your equity, you’ll be glad you did in years to come.
Also keep this in mind about your Super (401k). At the moment everyone is putting money into (topping up as they are encouraged to do) their Super funds and therefore into the markets… the markets have been going up… As the baby boomers retire and start taking their money out, where do you think the markets are going to head? Real estate could look pretty dam good then! Get yourself a copy of the book Rich Dad’s Prophecy by Robert Kiyosaki, it goes into more depth.

The Intelligent Investor is an online and paper based value investing newsletter service for ASX investors.

They provide a subscription service (24 issues (1 year) - $495) that provides you with:

• 1000 + stock reviews at www.intelligentinvestor.com.au
• Weekly email alerts reporting on sharemarket news and price movements
• 5-10 extra special reports posted to you throughout the year
• Model growth and income portfolios to guide you in your investment decisions
• Sharemarket advice from our research analysts on email and over the phone
• A 100% money-back guarantee if you’re unhappy at all during your subscription.

A great thing about this site is they also offer a FREE trial service. This provides you with 3 free issues of their reports over a 6 week period.
So head on over and sign up for your free trial, you’ve got nothing to lose, everything to gain and it will be well worth your time.

Stockradar is a handy site for the Australian stock market investors out there. Available is Stockradar’s stock of the week, a free bi-monthly newsletter that covers quite a few stocks in detail and they also offer a subscription service for a yearly fee of $346.50. The subscription includes:

• Stock Picks:
  Released Monday (pre market).
  Stockradar’s entries and exits for the week including Richard Lie’s Top Ten Stock Picks and an update on all our covered stocks.
• Stock Alerts:
  Tuesday to Friday.
  Sent direct to your email address at 9.45am.
  Also available on our website.
• Weekly Sector Update:
  Released Tuesday.
  Each week we take an in depth view of one our 24 Industry Groups.
• Risk Calculator:
  Check you risk. Is it too high? Where should your protection be?
• The Free Stockradar Newsletter:
  A bi-monthly insight to a selection of Stockradar’s highlighted stocks.

I have previously paid for a subscription with Stockradar, but found that their way of investing didn’t suit mine at the time. They are deffinetly more long term focused investors with wider stops (weekly stops that can some times result in large losses if not kept in check). They select as many stocks as they feel out of the top 200 that are trending upwards at the time with some decent research and technical to back them up.

I found that the free newsletter is good enough + the stock pick of the week can often be a winner.

Head on over and sign up for the newsletter and check out the rest of the site.

Thursday night I attended the Fat Prophets seminar in Adelaide. The session was split into 2 with the first half going over Fat Prophets traits for successful investors, including:

• The boom bust cycle - understanding where we are in the cycle
• Minimise losses - stops when using leverage or technical analysis - ignore fluctuations long term
• Let your profits run… but don’t give in to greed - eg sell half after a large profit
• Don’t buy overvalued companies
• Diversification - always hold at least 5 stocks from different asset clasess
• Follow some rules - have them and be consistent

The second half was on where the markets are heading.
The next 5yrs we are in for increased volatillity, oil to never see the south side of $40 a barrel again (no suprise there) and heading over $100 a barrel. Interest rates will be rising as inflation is rising. The USA’s debt is out of control and can not be sustained for ever. Dow Jones to continue to underperform. Aussie dollar to be worth more than the US dollar in the next 5 years.
Gold - another 5 years of the bull market in gold to go, currently in a medium term correction. Not much in the ground, 3.5 thousand tonnes a year used, 2.5 thousand tonnes mined a year, 140 thousand tonnes mined ever!
Australia - Resources should keep our markets up and with lots of superannunation being put into the market also.

Curent Investment ideas ( do what you will with these)

• Japan market still recovering with much higher levels to come
• Japan property looking good for a rebound - Managed Fund - Platinum Japan Fund or BJT-ASX or Rubicon Japan Property Trust
• Gold - LHG-ASX - 30 year mine - not hedged - pretty much follows the gold price
• Telstra - TLS-ASX yep you heard it Telstra and they say to get some T3’s

So there you have it. A lot of this seminar was similar to last years, including some of the same stocks reccomended. I guess this just shows you that these guys are in it for the long term!

Net Quote is a data and news provider for the ASX. They sell software, data and infromation on the Australian Stock Exchange.
But what I find most useful about these guys is if you register a free guest account you can join Netquote and have access to your own Portfolio Manager, Daily Email and more. This email that come twice a day gives you a run down on international markets including oil, gold and international stock news.  It also gives you a great overview of key ASX stock announcements, indices and the most active stocks for the day.

So if your after a twice daily market update that comes to you, get over to Net Quote and sign up!

Now this is a great site with a free newsletter that if your into or interested in property investment you have to visit.

Michael Yardney is a property investor, developer, business owner and author. When it comes to property, over his lifetime he has seen it all and done it all before. As he has been through so many property cycles he is a great resource for information on where we are in the current cycle and what to do in the different stages of the property cycle.
Michaels motto is to only buy well located high growth properties, do your research (past growth in an area is a great indication of future growth over a 10yr period), find motivated vendors, make cheeky offers and buy investments below market price and in particular look for properties to which you can add value creating your own capital growth.

The Property Investment Update website lets you sign up for the free monthly newsletter that contains articles from Michael and a heap of other property experts.
Micheal Yardney also has a book out called “How to Grow a Multi Million Dollar Property Portfolio - in your spare time”. I have read this book and highly recoommend it and I will review it on this site at a later date - stay tuned for that!

For now head on over to the site, have a read and sign up for the newsletter.

InvestSmart is a great  resource for everything to do with the Australian Stock Exchange,  Superannunation,  Managed  Funds , Insurance, Finance and much more.
This site was one of the first sites that got my attention when I realised I wanted more from my life than the 9 till 5 drudgery.  When I first started investing in the stock market, my strategy was to get into just about every new float that I could as when they were averaged out you could effectively sell on the first day and the end of the year have a 30% plus return. It was a good theory, but I soon found out getting into every float was pretty dam hard as a one man show. I usually got into all the average ones and missed out on the doublers!
Any who back to InvestSmart where they have all the info and prospectuses of up and coming floats or IPO’s. Very handy in deed.
Another great thing about Investsmart I found out and used is their entry fee rebate on managed funds. They also refund you their commissions!!

If you sign up and become a member of the site (Free of course ) you can set up your portfolio with their online tools showing you your assets and liabilities and your end result your net worth.  It’s good to get it down and actualy see where you are! You can also track things in a watch list like certain stocks or managed funds performance.

There are a heap of great tools and services on this site, your best off to just head over there and get into it yourself!

Investsmart