Thursday, May 14, 2009

Pick the Right Value Stock by NextView, Benny Lee

I attended a preview in NextView on a course titled "How To Pick The Right Value Stock", speaker was Benny Lee who constantly writes for Smart Investor.

What initially attracted me was that he claimed that he can find the 'value' of a stock technically.  

As some of you may have learned that my 'valuation' imply the scientific calculation of a company's past years finance data growth rate.  It is beyond my imagination how to calculate what a stock's worth is base solely on prices alone.

At the end, it is just another marketing talk - probably a smart one thao.  When they talk about 'value', they mean the marker perceived worth, not the REAL value of a business.  So the Moving Average alone can tell us how much a stock is worth in the eye of the investors.

It may sounds logical and it is hard for me to convince otherwise.  But the real meaning of Moving Average is simply the average of a stock price base of the previous how-many-days prices.  And this Moving Average line forms the floor (support) and ceiling (resistance) price for that stock.

And in practical life, this Moving Average = Value is NOT really that exercisable.  For example;

If I think stock A is worth price X, I will buy when A's price is below X.

But in Technical Analysis, when stock A move below Moving Average (price X), its a SELL signal.  And you buy when stock A's price goes above X ( ceiling break ).  Which is OPPOSITE of valuation methods.

I immediately left the preview at this stage because I normally cannot tolerate this kind marketing twist.  However, I do have room to believe that they may have solution to my challenge but I am quite sure if the argument did get started, the best solution they can come up with is to use multiple indicators to get more reliable prediction.

Benny also claims that Most of the Analysts reports are Wrong!  And Therefore fundamental analysis is useless! He is referring to new project engagement, news of expansion, take over etc as fundamentals.  As Malpf has been preaching, anything that can change overnight is NOT fundamental!  So all these NEWs are  NOT fundamentals at all!  They are at best strong supporting news.  Which are purely subject to the Analyst's opinion on what that news may result.

For example, 100,000 viewers have promised to read Malpf blog is a good news but NOT a fundamental.  More than 500 viewers have been reading Malpf for the past 9 months - is a Fundamental.

People who promised can change, to higher or lower numbers.  But past 9 months of data already occurred and they do not get changed easily.  Fundamental is something that does NOT get changed easily.

But this is not Benny's fault at all.  Almost 100% of market analysts have no choice but to follow the trend treating news as fundamentals now.  Because everybody is talking about how good technical analysis is.  So if a market analyst is singing different tone, it is very hard for him to keep his job as his boss and others do not agree nor believe in him.

Other than above, I think they can still run a good training for beginners.  They plan to include teaching on Stochastic, MACD, Bollinger Bands and Candlesticks.  The course is only RM 150 per person and comes with 6 months support ( I think, you will have to ask NextView if you are interested ).  So its quite a good deal if you are not one of those who can learn these stuff by yourself.  

It wouldn't hurt you too much even if you got the wrong understanding on these technical stuff as long as you are able to USE them correctly.