In The Forever Portfolio, James Altucher shows how to find “”forver”” stocks – ones that can be safely bought and held for at least 20 years. These companies will profit from braod demographic trends and can ride short-term market fluctuations. The Forever Portfolio shows investors how to build a strong, consistent, long-term portfolio, diversified enough to withstand the various cycles of the market.
Author’s Note:
I don’t like to worry. This seems like an obvious statement, hardly worth mentioning in the first lines of a substantial investing book. But the reality is, most people do like to worry. They worry about their investments on a day-to-day basis. They worry about their weight, even though minute by minute there’s almost nothing they can do to change it. They worry about what their boss thinks of them, or they overanalyze the latest e-mails from colleagues, superiors, boyfriends, or girlfriends. People stay up late at night worrying, or they wake up in the middle of the night, plagued by whatever is on their minds.
The human brain has an urge to be active, and in the absence of anything important, the mind creates things to fill the space. These thoughts cover the spectrum, from fretting about a possible terrorist attack to worrying about money, retirement, the health of one’s parents, and so on. And these thoughts could easily be those of a twenty-seven-year-old.
I’ll give you a specific example. In 1999, I was buying an apartment. It was during the height of the tech boom, and I was flush with illiquid paper trading at fairly lofty values. I thought I was rich. I found a beautiful 4,500-square-foot loft with roof access. The real-estate broker showed me a few more places, but I was hooked on that initial apartment. As a last “check the box” moment I asked my broker, Nancy, one final thing: What happens if terrorists blow up the building next door?
“You can’t live your life that way,” Nancy, being the good sales-woman she was, replied. And she was right. Life is short, and the only way we can enjoy it and the relatively few moments we are all given is to not spend them anxious and nervous, constructing fictional scenarios that can drive us crazy. Unfortunately, as it turned out, terrorists did blow up the building next door: The apartment I bought was right next to the World Trade Center. Nothing could alleviate the tragedy that engulfed the families of the victims of the attacks, and the entire neighborhood was completely submerged in the aftermath. Everyone was affected. Lives were lost, the financial markets plunged, and businesses and investment capital were put on hold for years.
The scars of that day of infamy are so deep, it is fair to say that the nation never really recovered. But the great thing about a global economy is that it does recuperate as opportunity finds its way back into the financial system. The key to investing, then, is staying in the game, consistently looking for opportunity and not worrying about all of those things that are meaningless or out of your control.
Why start a book on investing with this discussion of worry? Because this book is not about how to get rich or how to achieve 100 percent returns or whatever it is that most investment books are about. This book is about how to eliminate the distractions so that you can make sound investment decisions, rest easy, and enjoy all of the other aspects of your life. You don’t want to have to look at your investments every day for the rest of your life. You don’t want to have to follow every tick of the markets or panic if they plunge 10 percent in a week, as they often do.
Contents:
- Don’t Be a Forever Contrarian
- Computer Viruses Will Live Forever
- Inoculate Your Portfolio Against the Risk of Global Pandemic
- Diamonds, Clothes, Chocolate
- Common Sense Always Works
- Bubble 2.0
- Crime and Punishment
- The Forever Diet
- There’s No Known Cure
- Drink Clean Water
- The Boring Forever Portfolio
- The Baby Boomers
- The U.S. Gambling Industry
- How to Be a Great Man and Learn from Great Men
- Piggybacking
- Shock-Absorb Your Forever Portfolio and Avoid the Sidewalks
- The Entire Internet Is Going Down and There’s Nothing We Can Do
- Patents Make the World Go ’Round
- Mistakes Were Made; or, Accumulate Small Advantages to Live Forever
- Do You Want to Be a Forever Employee? The Art of Reverse Exploitation
- Internet Forever; or, Five Mistakes I Made as a VC
- Generating Ideas That Last Forever; or, Investing in Your Business/Ideas
- Bloody Marys, Dividends, and the San Francisco Earthquake
- Can You Live and Invest Forever?
- The Forever Student
- Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls
- Like Father, Like Son
- Nothing Lasts Forever
The Forever Portfolio: How to Pick Stocks that You Can Hold for the Long Run By James Altucher pdf