A Post to Close The Year

I've had some readers post a couple of questions that I will address over the weekend.

For now I wanted to close out 2004 with a kind of state of blogging/what this blog's purpose is type of article. I came up with this idea a couple of days a go and then I saw yesterday a similar idea floated on Bill Cara's new site. I should disclaim that Bill is a very smart guy and seems to be much more intellectual than I am, by a mile.

Stock market blogs have received a lot of attention in the last couple of months and I think that will continue to evolve in a good way. This will hopefully draw more smart people into the blogosphere which will benefit bloggers and investors. We should all hope this happens.

Back to Bill's posting. Someone emailed in asking Bill for a blog review. The writer just started a new blog is my guess. Bill's reply was to ask why the person was blogging before doing a review. Honestly I don't know why that was important to Bill in order to do a review, but its a good question for any blogger to ask himself.

I maintain this blog for several reasons.

I enjoy writing. Its a lot of fun to explore different concepts in the investing realm, take in the occasional comment and then figure out what went right and what went wrong. I learn from this process.

I hope that my writings help people become more informed investors. Whether I am smart or dumb, I think its fair to say I have a different take on a lot of investment related topics. I will say I think I do a good job on this blog at looking at different ideas and coming up with good questions that a lot of people might not come up with, but are important nonetheless.

The most important thing I try to bring to the table is my thought process. I don't hold back information. When I write an article, you are reading my entire thought process on the concept, as well as I can express it anyway.

One thing I don't write a lot about are specific stock holdings, but sometimes I do when it is relevant. As a top down manager stock selection is the least important part of the process, not unimportant but least important. For example I wrote awhile back about owning an Irish bank personally and for clients. There aren't too many Irish banks but all the ones I know about correlate quite highly to each other. I must admit that once I have decided I want own, sticking with the same example, an Irish bank the process of analysis is probably not very unique. Where I think value is added for my clients and on this blog is the other parts of portfolio construction, the big picture stuff. I have written before that if I can get most of the big picture stuff correct I believe my clients will be in good shape.

If you have found this blog to be useful and have learned from it, I am thrilled and hope I can keep it up. If you read this only to use me as a contrary indicator that is good too. You can still learn from people you think are dumb.

Time to watch a whole lot of college football. Happy New Year.