Frequently Asked Questions

Blast Investor Real-time Plus

1. What is good about value investment method, can it make me rich quick?
   
2. There are many value mutual fund or long term value-based investment newsletter, what's special about Blast Investor Real-time Plus?
   
3. Can you advice me personally? Should I buy or sell?
4. I want to know more about the long term value investment style you are preaching, where should I start?
5. How can I use the service?
6. I want to follow buy&sell alert, should I use market order or limit order to buy or sell?
7. After I received the buy&sell alert,the stock price is up or down a lot, how should I follow?
8. I am busy at work. Can I follow the alert after many hours of delay or even days of delay?
9. What is Hot list?
10. What is Private Club service (formerly BIRTP Blog service)?
    

1. What is good about value investment method, can it make me rich quick? 
   Answer: Yes or No. Certainly long term value method is not another "get rich quick" scam. Most likely you will not become millionaire in one year by subscribing to our service if your current income is mainly from salary. Please be aware of what many daytrading services or momentum trading services tout. They do not tell you whole story of how risky their trading method is. Maybe they do not care about the risk in that they make money mainly by asking you for extraordinary fees rather than investing in market themselves.  More than 90% of daytraders or momentum traders lose money in the long run.  In the long run with power of compounding of investment return, we believe you can reach your financial freedom by sticking with long term value investment principle in stock market as Henry does no matter how small your initial capital is.  You can look at most successful investors in US yourself, and find out which  investment method produced most of the millionaires or billionaires. Even Warren Buffett started out as a poor guy when he started investing many decades ago.
   
2. There are many value mutual fund or long term value-based investment newsletter, what's special about Blast Investor Real-time Plus?  
   Answer:The investment newsletter industry or mutual fund industry is full of low-performing and unethical pretenders that could harm their clients. You are certainly entitled to be skeptical toward any new service or product. However, we are not one of those pretenders and we are in this business for the long term. Here are key advantages of our service:
   
1. Our goal for the Blast Investor Model Portfolio is to beat index and to deliver above average investment return at lowest possible risk with long term value investment method.
   
2. We will be honest to all our subscribers and we consider integrity as most important in our services. Here is our guarantee of integrity.
   
3. Our performance is one of best among industry and our fee is among lowest. You can compare our performance and our fee to any value based mutual fund or investment newsletter. Please be aware that although mutual fund did not ask you to pay fee directly, their performance is already after their annual fee. Here is simplified hypothetical example of comparison:
   
• If your investment capital is $15,000, suppose you follow our model portfolio passively. Your cost for our service is $299.88, which is about 2% of your capital.
• If our model portfolio one year performance is 19%, After deducting our fee, your post-fee performance is 19 - 2% =  17%.
  
• A mutual fund performance for that one year is 7%, their fee is 1% or $150 for your $15,000 capital.
  
• Our post-fee performance would significantly beat that particular mutual fund in this hypothetical example. You make $1500 more with following our model portfolio rather than investing into that mutual fund hypothetically with just $15,000 capital in one year.
• Disclaimer: Real-life result and performance can differ. Above example is just a hypothetical illustration.
  
4. It is very easy to follow our model portfolio while many other newsletters offer confusingly multiple portfolios, or stock picks without real-time trade alert.  We offer you only one and the best portfolio with real-time portfolio position disclosure. Our trade alert price is whatever price we believe you can obtain at time of alert so that we removes guesswork of buy and sell timing for you.
   
5. You gain hands-on experiences and knowledges in stock picking. Our newsletter will tell you why we picked that stock in detail. Many of the reasons Henry pick the stock is same principle preached in Ben Graham or Warren Buffett or Peter Lynch principles. He will tell you in detail if it applies so that not only you benefit from our author Henry Lu, you also learn from principles of Great Masters through our service.
   
6. We are fast in looking for bargains.  With computational data-mining expertise,  Henry is able to find bargains before main street is aware of it. Every week our in-house data-mining software scans through thousands of stocks at "blasting speed" looking for qualities that match value investment criteria. 
   
7. We are thorough in our analysis. Henry studies hundreds of promising leads every month by analyzing industry trends, comparing to its competitors, reading SEC filings, checking Insider Trading patterns,  listening to earning conference calls, talking to its management and detecting any traces of dishonest behavior of them, reviewing its product's market acceptance, etc. Since margin of safety is most important principle of any value investment style, we minimize the risk for you with thorough due diligence before we issue our buy&sell alert.
   
3. Can you advice me personally? Should I buy or sell?   
   Answer:  Our newsletter content is only intended for information purpose. We or our newsletter author Henry Lu does not provide personalized investment advice tailored to specific person.  Blast Investor Real-time Plus. newsletter buy & sell alert only reflects author Henry Lu's own opinion in managing the model portfolio. Those buy & sell alert or the newsletter articles do not constitute investment advice to specific person.
4. I want to know more about the long term value investment style you are preaching, where should I start?   Answer:  There are numerous information on value investment. One best book on this strategy is original book written by Benjamin Graham, titled Intelligent Investor, which can be found in any book store or Amazon.
   
5. How can I use the service? 
   Answer: We do not recommend specific way how you can use our service, and you can use the service as you wish. This flexibility of our service allows you to have full control of your investment while you can still benefit from using our service. Without endorsing any of the specific method below, here are several ways that you can use our service:
   
• First of all, determine how much money you want to allocate for investment into Blast Investor Real-time Plus picks. This typically involves analysis of your personal risk tolerance, age, time for needing the money etc. Since this is outside our scope of expertise, you have to consult your own financial adviser if you need help.
  
• Determine whether you are a passive investor who want to use our service by mainly following the model portfolio or an aggressive investor who want to actively manage your investment for all our picks.
  
• No matter you are a passive investor or an aggressive investor, you will need to pay close attention to some of small cap or micro cap picks. Some of our picks have very low trading volume so that you should not use market order to buy or sell them. Limited order is recommended to trade them.
  
• If you are passive investor that might want to follow our model portfolio as if it is a mutual fund or a hedge fund portfolio.
  
• You can invest into our existing model portfolio gradually in dollar cost averaging fashion. You gradually invest  more money into our model portfolio existing positions in same proportion for each picks. Your return will mimic our model portfolio return gradually.
• You can invest designated amount of your money into our model portfolio immediately. You immediately buy up all the positions in our existing model portfolio in same proportion and follow our new picks and new sale in same proportion . This way from day one your investment return will mimic our model portfolio from the starting date of your investment.
  
• If you are aggressive investor that might want to actively manage your investment.
  
• You can treat our each report and buy & sell alert as pure stock research tool and do not necessarily follow every  trade or pick of the model portfolio. You decide yourself whether to follow, or how much to follow. This way potentially you can out-perform our model portfolio by avoiding some bad picks in our model portfolio. However, potentially you may under-perform our model portfolio too by missing good picks.
• You can follow our new pick buy & sell alert immediately, but you might not follow our existing portfolio positions blindly. You may buy existing model portfolio stocks only when they drops. You may under-perform in that our existing position may never drop to your buying point and you miss a good pick.  You may out-perform our model portfolio in that you may get cheaper price that way.
• You might want to pay close attention to our Daily hot list in addition to our email newsletter issues.
  
6. I want to follow buy & sell alert, should I use market order or limit order to buy or sell?
   Answer: this is place where you have to take caution and make your own judgment.  Here is what BIRTP newsletter author Henry Lu will do regarding this issue: 
• For most of stocks, including large cap, mid cap or small cap, Henry's purchase or sale dollar amount is insignificant compared to average daily volume. Therefore, he would typically use market order to buy or sell. Since he is long term investor, he is not concerned with 1% or 2% up or down of entry price.
  
• For some small cap or micro cap stocks, which have very small average daily volume so that Henry's buy or sell volume will change price dramatically, Henry will buy or sell gradually bit by bit using limit order so that he may finish buying or selling in multiple days or weeks rather than one day.
  
7. After I received the buy&sell alert, the stock price is up or down a lot, how should I follow?  
   Answer: There are many possibilities for this to happen. You should take caution and make your own judgment. Here are some possibilities for the discrepancy of our real-time buy&sell alert price and the price you are seeing right after the alert:
• The stock has very small float or small trading volume. Right after the service issued a small float stock, and stock price is up or down a lot from buy&sell alert price , say 5% or more.  You need to take extra caution in following the alert. Read our trade alert and stock report carefully and make your own judgment. Long term value investment performance depends on the entry price a lot. The higher you pay for the entry, the less return you will get. The lower price you pay, the higher return you will get.
  
• The stock appears to have large trading volume. Then there might be some special events happening. Check carefully about the stock news. Again, since the stock price is up or down a lot from our real-time buy&sell alert price, you have to take extra caution and make your own judgment.
8. I am busy at work. Can I follow the alert after many hours of delay or even days of delay?
   Answer:  Yes, you can. Henry Lu will only issue the real-time buy&sell alert when he believes the price is very good for an entry. If you want to obtain closest performance to our model portfolio performance, it is best if you can follow the alert within 5% of real-time alert price.  Since many of Henry's picks are slow moving value stocks, usually there is no significantly price difference within same day or even the next day.  Our real-time buy&sell alert gives you the flexibility of following the model portfolio either in real-time basis or in delayed fashion. If you intend to passively follow our model portfolio, real-time buy&sell alert enables you to invest into Blast Investor Model Portfolio as if it is a mutual fund or a hedge fund portfolio. You are in control and you are your own fund manager and our services are designed to help you to do that.
   
9. What is Hot list?
   Answer: Hot list is part of Blast Investor Real-time Plus service that is designed to help new subscribers investing your new money into our existing positions or to help aggressive investors to actively manage their investment. Since long term investment performance depends on the entry price a lot, the hot list is focusing on determining which of existing positions offer best risk reward ratios for long term investment purposes. Aggressive investors can invest into most attractive picks first. We do not preach short term trading and the Hot list is not meant for short term trading.  Hot list is in table spread sheet style. Here is description of fields:
• Day:  last day of change
• Symbol: stock ticker. "market" is comments for general markets.
• Type: Each stock will be assigned as "value" or "growth" stocks. Since growth stocks are considered more risky, aggressive investors can manage own risk control with this information.
• Investing Rational: summary of the reason for the stock pick. Below is explanation of current value for this field:
  
• "Asset" - The stocks liquidation value or private acquisition value is above its current stock price.
• "Turnaround" - The stock is under-priced under distressed economics. The stock is attractive and the investment is based on pending turnaround.
• "Buffett consumer monopoly" -  The stocks are reasonably priced growth stocks, which meet Warren Buffett consumer monopoly criteria.  They typically have "durable competitive advantage" and they are not in "commodity"-type business. They typically can raise price regularly and they have high barrier of entry. Overall, they have very high return on equity ratio.
• "Earning yield" -  The stocks are very cheap based on "true earning" yield. Typically, these group have "true earning yield" of  15%-20% or "true PE" ratio of 5 - 7.  We do not accept earning number reported by company at face value. The reported number many times do not reflect true earning power of a company due to accounting rules or due to dishonest behavior of company management. Many times author Henry Lu has to calculate himself the true earning based on  Benjamin Graham security analysis method.
  
• Risk/Reward: Risk vs reward ratio of each stock at current price of date based on long term value method. Each stock is assigned as "favorable" , "very favorable", "extremely favorable".
  
• Trading warning:  Small float  are those stocks with very small trading volume. Limit order is recommended for those stocks.
• Comments : Author Henry Lu's short notes. This part of service now is offered through BlastInvest Private Club service.
10. What is Private Club service (formerly Blog service)?
    Answer: Private Club service is part of Blast Investor Real-time Plus service that offers latest short comments from Henry Lu, archives and email alert of Hot List change, as well as a private discussion board for all BIRTP members on topics related to BIRTP.  Private Club service is private message board of Value Investing Forum that only paid members of BIRTP can Q&A on newsletter stock picks. BIRTP members are automatically assigned with membership in Value Investing Forum or Private Club with same pair of username and password.