Everything Investing: A look at Sham Gad

I got an interesting request last week from a pal to start a blog related to investing. While I generally like the idea, I decided with the various things on my plate (M&A work, running College Knowledge, running the CK blog, researching my own investing partnership, reading, etc) that it would probably be stretching me a bit thin. Instead, I think the next best thing is to write an ongoing series of investing related posts under the title "Everything Investing".

My thinking behind adding investing to the topics covered in this blog (wide ranging topics within education and life) is that everyone should have some sort of basic knowledge of investing. Indeed, it's not too hard to learn, it can be fun, and best of all you can make money. To do so, however, requires dedication, patience, and confidence coupled with occasional outside the box thinking.

So for the first post in the "Everything Investing" series, I want to turn your attention to Sham Gad. Sham is an (unfortunately) UGA b-school graduate who follows a Buffett/Munger/Pabrai/value approach to investing. The best place to read about Sham is at his blog. I suggest reading through the value investors library on his blog as well as reading through some of his later blog posts. I get a good vibe from Sham and have felt comfortable enough trading emails with him and even posting some honest comments on his blog. While he has no public track record, he seems wise and should be a formidable investor for quite some time if he can stick to his guns running Gad Capital.

So anyways, we've covered Munger on this blog before (you can find the link right here) and I've book reviewed Buffett's biography so it's not hard to see these famous investors have influenced me as well. And if you go to Sham's blog, you'll see the two investors have influenced him strongly. I strongly recommend a value approach to investing, particularly for beginning investors, and a great book to start you off is the Little Book of Value Investing. For a more passive approach to investing, I strongly suggest the Little Book of Common Sense Investing, which I've book reviewed before right here.

Addendum: If you have any investing related questions, please feel free to send emails or post comments. I'm willing to answer investing questions in addition to education, career, and life questions, so don't be shy!

CEO's on Facebook and Sticking To Your Convictions

Facebook side of today's post: I'm not so sure I agree with point 5 here. Though honestly the article she links to is more interesting than her 10 points.

Sticking To Your Convictions: Today is a great test for any of you investors out there - it's a chance where you see if your thesis sticks up and if, in fact, you have the conviction to double down. If you're a long term investor, a day like today is GREAT - if you're a trader who is long stocks, you're probably in a bad mood with the Dow down 300+ points!

P.S. I'm glad to see Sham posted one of my comments as a whole separate post (I was post #1). Maybe I should do that with the feedback I'm getting from Facebook/emails!