Dad has been rather laid back of late and it seems it will only get worst with him in the midst of his self declared retirement. Most afternoons would see him sitting in front of the television with the Teletext switched on and him monitoring the stock prices of a few stocks he has in his portfolio.
It seems whenever any of these companies send their quarterly financial report to him, he would just take them and throw them away without even once glancing at them. Always he would state proudly that he is only interested if they send him dividends and not trash like this.
It sounded extremely worrying to me. So apparently he is buying shares of companies without actually understanding the happenings within these companies ( as per reflected in their quarterly financial statements). That is not really investing isn’t it, it sounds more like playing the Russian roulette in this case with his retirement money. Utter non-sense!
Thus today I went and took a look at the stocks he had been monitoring. Thankfully these companies being public listed have their financial statements (balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements) made easily available over the internet. Also even more thankfully being a graduate from the last batch of the commerce from Saint Andrew’s Junior college, having been thorough grilled in the matters of accounting and book keeping, I could at least understand somewhat the statements made available to me.
Reading through the statements, I have on a few occasions found something really puzzling. Why are current share prices higher than their net asset values as per indicated in the respective companies balance sheet? Perhaps the difference could be explained by the fact that these financial statements are outdated by 3 months or so. However such an explanation can be considered as the main cause of this difference, especially in cases whereby the share price is up to two times higher than net asset value (obviously these company can’t be performing that exceptionally well in this bearish market). Another plausible cause might be wanton speculation by investors. Well then, what goes up must come down. We will just have to wait till the next crisis comes along before share prices begin to return to earth from mars.