foreclosure investing

You've undoubtedly seen them or read them. Glossy advertisements or four-color spreads in periodicals and magazines promising to teach you all the juicy information about successful real-estate investing. And all you should do to learn each one of these real property investing surface encounters chuck russo secrets is to pay a rather high sum for a one-or two-day seminar.




Often these types of slick real estate investing workshops claim you could make intelligent, profitable real estate investments with simply no money lower (except, of course, the large fee you purchase the seminar). Now, how attractive is which? Make a make money from real est investments you made out of no funds. Possible? Not likely.




Successful investment requires cashflow. That's the character of any kind of business or investment, especially real-estate investing. You put your cash into a thing that you wish and plan can make you more money.




Unfortunately not enough newbies to the world of real estate investing believe it's a magical type of business exactly where standard company rules will not apply. Simply place, if you want to stay in real estate investing for more than, say, a day or 2, then you are going to have to create money to utilize and commit.




While it could be true in which buying property with simply no money down is simple, anyone that is even made a simple real estate investment (such as buying their particular home) understands there's much more involved in property investing that can cost you money. For example, what about any necessary repairs?




So, the number 1 rule people a new comer to real estate investing ought to remember is to have obtainable cash stores. Before you decide to actually carry out any property investing, save some money. Having a little money in the bank once you begin real property investing surface encounters chuck russo can help you make more profitable real estate investments in rental properties, for example.




When real-estate investing inside rental qualities, you'll want every single child select simply qualified tenants. If you've no income when real-estate investing in rental properties, you might be pressured experience a less qualified tenant because you need somebody to cover you money to enable you to take attention of maintenance or lawyer fees.




For almost any real property investing, meaning local rental properties or properties you buy to re-sell, having money reserved can permit you to ask for any higher price. You can request a greater price from the owning a home because an individual surface encounters chuck russo won't feel financially strapped as you wait for an offer. You won't be backed into a corner and forced to accept just any offer because you desperately need the money.




Another downfall of many new to real estate investing is actually, well, greed. Make a profit, yes, but don't become therefore greedy which you ask with regard to ridiculous leasing or resale rates on all of your real estate investments.




Those not used to real est investing need to see real-estate investing as a business, NOT an interest. Don't believe real estate investing is going to make you abundant overnight. What enterprise does?




It will take about six months to figure out if real-estate investing set for you. If you might have decided which, hey I love this, then offer yourself a few years to truly start earning money. It typically takes at the very least five years to become truly successful in real estate investing.




Persistence may be the key to success in property investing. If you've decided that real estate investing is made for you, surface encounters chuck russo keep plugging away at it and the rewards will be greater than you imagined.

The manic depressive market wildly swings up and down on each new news story: The Fed is meeting at Jackson Hole on August 27 possibly to discuss QE3 (or not), and that news may pump up the stock market. But China's banks seem to be using Enron's accounting manual, Europe's banks need liquidity and are loaded with bad debt, and U.S. banks only temporarily TARPed over trouble. Gaddafi's regime in Libya appears over, but Libya's oil output may not fully recover for years. Venezuela wants banks to open their vaults and send back its gold, but Wells Fargo says gold is a bubble. Pundits say gold is a barbarous relic, but exchanges and banks are now using gold as money. The U.S. is headed for hyperinflation with skyrocketing stock prices, but on the other hand, we seem to be deflating like Japan and doomed to a deflating stock market for another decade. Whom do you trust and what should you do?

No one knows where the stock market or U.S. Treasury bonds are headed tomorrow, but in my opinion, here are some fundamentals to consider.



The Bad News Isn't Going Away

Until we have real global financial reform and restrain the banks, we won't have sustained growth. The stock market hasn't hit bottom. There's a crisis of confidence in banks and all currencies. We haven't taken effective steps to tackle the U.S. deficit through productivity. We haven't examined spending to eliminate fraud and waste, and we haven't addressed our need for more tax revenues by eliminating the Bush tax cuts (for starters).

Savers are punished by "stranguflation:" negative real returns on "safe" assets, declining housing prices, and rising costs of food, energy and health care. The Fed touts the falling cost of I-Pads, but how often do you buy one of those, and how often do you eat?

Good News (for Now)

The USD is still the world's reserve currency. Even though we devalued the USD, there has been a global flight to U.S. Treasuries pushing down our borrowing costs (yields). No one in the global financial community feels the U.S. has done its best to correct our problems, but severe problems in Europe, China's inflation, and Middle East unrest has money running to the U.S. Since we've devalued the dollar, we appear to be a bargain for foreign investors, even though they are terrified by our money printing presses and the potential for inflating commodity prices in the long run.

How did I play this? My own portfolio is currently more than 20% gold with some silver, and I bought out-of-the-money call options on the VIX when it was in the teens with maturities of 4-6 months. This is "short" stock market strategy, one could have also done well buying puts on the S&P a few months ago. In the first big stock market downdraft in August, I sold the options when the VIX hit the high 30's, and I'll buy more options again if the VIX falls again. Many investors are not comfortable with options, and this strategy isn't appropriate for everyone. The rest of my portfolio is chiefly in cash or deep value opportunities.



What Happens Next?

No one knows for sure, and anyone who tells you he or she does is selling snake oil. The situation is fluid. We tried to reflate our deflating economy. Our massive dollar devaluation may encourage investment, because it's protectionist. It reduces our cost of labor, among a few other "benefits." The problem is that the Fed has printed money, and we haven't done anything to position the U.S. for greater productivity. We're trying to inflate our way out of a problem without investing in productivity. This is a very dangerous way of attacking this problem. Even more "stimulus" would just be an attempt to inflate our way out of our long-standing deep recession. That's the foolish and unsuccessful strategy we've adopted so far. That could lead to runaway budget deficits (our deficit already looks intractable) and bring us to double-digit inflation. Even the European flight to US Treasuries may not save us from a deeper recession in that scenario.

If we don't overreact -- and we may have already overreacted -- our dollar devaluation results in our foreign trade situation first getting worse (as it has now) before it gets better. Now is the time (actually, we should have started years ago) to spend capital to increase U.S. productivity. The dollar's plunge relative to other currencies will eventually make us more competitive. This will be good for blue chip companies, in particular those that own real assets and manufacture items. The Fed and Washington may do anything, however, so one must watch the news.

What does this mean for the U.S. stock market? In my opinion, it is currently not good value and feels like the 1970s when we experienced a recession followed by inflation. One should consider staying mostly in cash and expect stocks become cheaper. One might miss an interim rally, especially if the Fed announces QE3 (more "stimulus" and money printing) or more bank bailouts, but that is like using Kleenex laced with sneezing powder. We will see stock prices even lower than they are today. The old paradigm dictated that stocks were a buy when P/E ratios were 13 or less (and many are well above that), dividends at 4%, and book values at 1.3 or less. (This excludes oil companies, which tend to trade at lower P/E ratios in general.) I believe we'll see much better deals in coming months. In 1978/79 P/E ratios sank below 7 for blue chip companies.

Should one buy U.S. Treasuries with long maturities? The long end of the bond market doesn't reward investors due to the potential of rising interest rates. If interest rates spike to double digits, then one can reassess the situation.

Long term investors should consider buying commodities or companies that own physical commodities. We're running out of key commodities especially related to agriculture and fertilizer. Washington's brand of the latter isn't the type we need.

Warren Buffett just announced that he's making a landmark investment, $5 billion, in Bank of America.

Bank of America was facing a free-falling stock price and a number of criticisms, including that it did not have enough capital, and that its assets were not worth what it claimed.

Now thanks to Buffett, that will certainly change.

When similar investments were made in Citi and in Goldman Sachs, by Prince Alwaleed and Warren Buffett, in 1990 and 2008, respectively, the stocks experienced long term gains. 

And get this - he says he dreamt up the idea to invest in Bank of America in the bathtub on Tuesday. He liked it, so he called Moynihan on Wednesday morning. The entire story of how it happened is available in a video embedded below, as told to Becky Quick by Buffett.

The story (and the mental image) is amusing but also important - it suggests that the Obama Administration and/or the Treasury, did not have a hand in the agreement.

And to make it very clear that Treasury or Obama had no hand in the arrangement, which makes the news even better for Bank of America.

So does this - the deal is expensive for Buffett, and a good deal for Bank of America. He says in some ways, it's better than the deal he gave to Goldman Sachs in 2008.

But obviously, it's a great deal for Buffett.

Buffett's investment alone is now worth $700 million more than it was when he bought it.