Investing Lessons from the Poker Table

I hate to disappoint, but I’m not going to stick my neck in the middle of that debate.

But whether we agree that investing and gambling are similar, there are some general ideas from the game of poker that can be adapted quite well for investing. And, heck, if there’s the possibility that it’ll make you a better investor, is it worth fretting about the source?

Lesson 1: You don’t have to play every hand
One of the quickest ways to make your chip stack disappear in poker is to blindly play every hand dealt to you. In a 10-player Texas Hold ‘em game, you’re only forced to bet 20% of the time, and even then they’re only small bets. You can throw away every other hand that’s dealt to you if you want, and it won’t cost you a dime.

But why would you throw away any cards? Well, a two of diamonds and a six of clubs can theoretically become a full house, but you start out with the odds stacked heavily against you when you play a hand like that. Waiting for something like a pair of kings or a queen and jack of spades gives you a much better chance of seeing a return on the money that you’re wagering.

The same holds true for investing. There’s a possibility that CIT Group (NYSE: CIT) could magically avoid bankruptcy and return a bonanza for shareholders. Or Sirius XM Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) could finally prove the critics wrong, start posting huge profits, and watch its stock fly. But let’s face it, both are long shots, and if you’re looking for solid, predictable returns to build a retirement nest egg, throwing piles of money at either stock is probably not the best idea.

On the flip side, companies like Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and Honeywell (NYSE: HON) positively ooze predictability and solid returns over the long run. Investing in companies like these — assuming you’re paying a fair price — simply gives shareholders a much higher probability of seeing returns from their investment. And, heck, investors don’t even have to wait for rewards since both currently pay dividends that exceed the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries.

Lesson 2: Play your cards right
Kenny Rogers immortalized yet another lesson that we can take from poker when he sang: “You got to know when to hold ‘em / know when to fold ‘em / know when to walk away / and know when to run.”

In both poker and investing, you’re faced with continually changing information. The best poker players and investors are those who not only make the most accurate analysis of the available information, but use that analysis to drive good decision making, whether that’s — in investing — buying, selling, or just sitting tight.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) is a great example of the constantly changing tides that investors can take advantage of. The company had one of the truly great growth stocks in its early years and delivered impressive gains. But not all that long ago it faced some major challenges as the PC market commoditized and its bread-and-butter mainframe market turned into a sleepy niche.

More recently, IBM has found a new life in transitioning to offering higher-margin software and services. Just like recognizing when you have a possible straight flush developing and betting accordingly, investors who figured out what was going on at IBM and invested accordingly have been handsomely rewarded. Over the past five years, its stock has substantially outperformed the S&P index.

Lesson 3: Be choosy with your “all-in” moments
It’s certainly exciting to watch a poker pro push all of his chips into the middle of the table and call “all in.” But it’s important to remember that top-notch players have run through a bunch of mental math to determine that the odds are heavily in their favor when they make a call like that.

Having all of your money invested at all times can be one of the easiest ways to go about investing, but it can also put you at a disadvantage. Not only will you absorb the full brunt of declines such as the one we’ve been living through, but it also leaves you with very little dry powder to invest when stocks do fall. However, with just a little more activity and attention, investors can keep an eye on stock valuations and adjust how much they have invested based on how pricey the market is.

If your all-in moments are restricted to times when the market is trading near or below its long-term average valuation, then you can shift the odds of market-beating returns further in your favor. Fortunately, there are many great tools available for tracking the overall market’s valuation, including my favorite, professor Robert Shiller’s 10-year average P/E spreadsheet.

When it comes to individual stocks, though, the picture is a little bit different. Although elite investors like Berkshire Hathaway’s (NYSE: BRK-A) Warren Buffett can make comments about being willing to go all in on Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), most mere mortals are best served by avoiding an all-in call — having their entire portfolio — on a single stock.

Putting away the cards
While having a working knowledge of poker might help bring some of the lessons above to life, you don’t have to ever play a single hand to put them to work. To review, here are three of the investing lessons that we can take from the poker table:

1. Wait for the best investment opportunities — there’s no harm in passing on a stock if you aren’t convinced that it’s a worthwhile investment.
2. Always be on top of new information and be willing to take action when necessary.
3. Going “all in” in your portfolio should be reserved for when market factors are highly attractive.

You can take these three lessons and start putting them to use right now.

Source: Fool.com

I kicked myself for two years while the stock quadrupled. In the spring of ’94, I followed my instincts and became an AOL shareholder — in spite of an article in a major financial publication that declared AOL grossly overvalued and predicted that the stock would decline by 35%.

The following year, the stock dropped 25% or more three times. And then in 1996, shares absorbed a drop of 65%! Despite these setbacks, the company went on to wreak havoc on both the business and journalistic establishments en route to putting up some of the best returns available during a decade of great investment returns.

Even with all the temporary downturns, and even though the stock is today down from its all-time high, my initial investment has still increased about 19 times overall — $10,000 in stock at that time would now be worth $190,658, which amounts to an annualized return of more than 23%.

We’d all love to find the next AOL or Amazon.com (NYSE: AMZN) or whatever. That goes without saying.

But how can ordinary investors like you and me — a couple of regular Fools — find the next great company? It’s not impossible. If you can train your eyes to spot innovative companies breaking the rules in their industries, you increase your odds dramatically.

You can’t score if you don’t shoot
The Wise of Wall Street would chalk up AOL’s 23% annualized gains to luck. “No one can really identify the great companies of the next generation,” they’d say. Growth stocks are too risky; it’s best to avoid that style of investing altogether and let a Street “expert” manage your investments.

I disagree. Investing in great companies early in their high-growth stages and then holding them for the long term will provide the highest possible returns. Period.

We call those companies Rule Breakers. Our investment service of the same name seeks out the great growth stocks of tomorrow — the potential AOLs — before the Street catches on.

Think big, but keep an eye on the basics
Boiled down, I look for six signs of a potential Rule Breaker:

* Sign No. 1: Top dog and first mover in an important, emerging industry.

Top dogs are active, fast-moving market leaders. In 1994, AOL was a top dog. Some years earlier, Microsoft was a top dog before making its impressive run. First movers seize a temporary edge over the competition and then exploit that advantage. These companies come from emerging industries — for example, from biotechnology today or e-commerce a few years back — because it’s unlikely that the railroad or meat-packing industries have much room left to run.

Rule Breakers are not hidden; they are right before our eyes, and they bring a disruptive technology, clever and effective marketing, or a brand-new business model to this little backwater planet of ours. They rattle our capitalistic foundations.

* Sign No. 2: Sustainable advantage gained through business momentum, patent protection, visionary leadership, or inept competitors.

Can the company protect the advantage it obtained from its first-mover status? Apple, for example, absolutely dominated Microsoft and Sony (NYSE: SNE) in portable music players and now is trying to do the same thing with smartphones to Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Palm (Nasdaq: PALM), and Research In Motion.

* Sign No. 3: Strong past price appreciation.

Sometimes, the best investments appear overvalued. I bought AOL after it quadrupled. Was Tiger Woods unknown before he joined the professional tour and started winning majors? Was No. 23 unheralded when he joined the Chicago Bulls after his junior year at North Carolina?

* Sign No. 4: Good management and smart backing.

This is the most important attribute of all — and it might be the most difficult to get right. Few would disagree that visionary leaders are behind the greatest companies of our generation: Nike has Phil Knight, Microsoft had Bill Gates, and Google has Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page. Investors should also be prepared to learn about the venture-backers of a young company. If the very best venture capital firms are behind a company, maybe you should be, too.

* Sign No. 5: Strong consumer appeal.

Rule Breaking companies provide products or services that improve the quality of people’s lives. Microsoft, for example, made home computer use a reality.

* Sign No. 6: You must find documented proof that it is overvalued according to the financial media.

This is the easiest one of all to identify. Every day, the Wall Street pooh-bahs declare that this or that stock is overvalued. Google shares begin trading publicly, and the naysayers predict another tech “meltdown.” Even today, with the vast majority of stocks having taken huge hits, there are some companies with improving fundamentals that Wall Street is afraid to touch because they appear more expensive than others.

If a company’s growing earnings lead to an increasing valuation, someone somewhere will surely argue that the company is overvalued. The reason this is valuable is that it keeps people out of a stock. Later on, as the company proves out its position as a profitable, even dominant, leader, then the skeptics finally buy — which is what can give you serious appreciation as an early investor in Rule Breaker stocks!

Before they were blue chips
So there you have it. Those are the characteristics I look for in tomorrow’s landscape-changing companies.

It’s essential to our strategy to identify great companies early in their growth cycles. Then we hold for the long term. Indeed, many of the best examples of Rule Breakers are today’s blue-chip companies. You may recognize a few:

* Two years after the company went public.
** All prices adjusted for splits and dividends.

Each of these companies had the six signs of a Rule Breaker at one point in its growth cycle — and each posted fantastic returns as a result. There are other not-as-famous companies out there — hundreds of them — that once were poised for the limelight but now are forgotten. In most cases, the flameouts and the fakers significantly lacked one or more of the signs we pointed to above.

There is no trade-off
With detailed information on more than 9,000 publicly traded companies, the stock market can’t help being fairly efficient. But the market doesn’t have all the information, does it? Many people insist on following the rules laid down by Wall Street or by the latest “this is the way to invest” fad investment book, regardless of how banal or unsuccessful these prescribed rules behave in practice.

Source: Fool.com

#1 Take stock of your current financial situation and goals

This involves calculating your net worth (assets minus liabilities), knowing how much money you have for stocks after paying your expenses, and setting financial objectives to cover everything from a comfortable retirement to your children’s university education.

#2 Determine the approach you’ll take to investing

An investor’s stock picking style will largely depend on a person’s stage in life, Dagys says. For example, a recent university grad with a high-paying job may want to consider a more aggressive approach that relies on growth stocks, while an individual nearing retirement may want to choose more conservative stocks, such as banks, to help preserve capital. The underlying reason is the stock market has historically gone up over the long-term, but has also shown multi-year periods of up and down cycles.

#3 Know your risks

This means understanding the downsides from all the risks associated with a company. For example, the returns on an American stock will be affected by the exchange rate between Canadian and U.S. dollars. Irrational shareholders can push the price of stock into bubble territory, or an emerging technology could soon make a company’s product obsolete.

#4 Get the right information

Making informed investment decisions requires reading and understanding financial statements, Dagys says. But be aware that a company’s bad news can be buried in footnotes