my current investment philosophy....

I’m breaking my investment efforts into three “big bet” areas. We’ll see if it pans out.

 

1. Index funds.
   Following the Random Walk on Wall Street theory of “it’s difficult to beat the market so let it ride on the Index funds.” 

 

2. The Asher Epstein Big Three.
   My brother, Asher, is an evangelist for three companies in particular. Echelon Networks (ELON), CheckFree (CKFR), and Wind River (WIND). If you know my brother, you’ll know he studies these things like very few people (he knows the CEO of CKFR and the leadership team and participates in quarterly con calls with Wall St. analysts as well having deep relationships with the Investor Relations folks at all of them).

 

There are a few others in here (Blackboard.com, for example) but the Big Three is all you need.

 

3. The Energy Doomsday Scenario. Oil goes at least to $100/barrel and maybe higher.
   Read a book called “The Coming Economic Collapse” which helped to quantify and flush out main of the ideas that I’d had in my head. These were around
1. Rising oil prices due to increased Chinese/Indian/world demand
2. Vulnerability of supply due to oil’s location in volatile regions (Middle East, Russia, Venezuela)
3. Lack of truly viable alternatives (yet)
4. America’s addiction to oil
5. And, the biggie, militant Islam’s focus on castrating the West through disruptions of supply

 

The play here is in, to varying degrees, energy companies, Gold, inflation protected assets, real estate (maybe), China/India (maybe).