Renowned financial expert John Mauldin wrote a book called
Bull's Eye Investing
a few years ago, but he has taken the opportunity given to him by
Wiley to condense the book down into the new
Little Book of Bull's Eye Investing
. Mauldin's other books include
Just One Thing
and
Endgame
, and he is the President of Millennium Wave Advisors, an
investment advisory firm.
He has a loyal following of over one million thanks to his
keen eye for an opportunity and ability to know when to back
away. He's also extremely busy, but Benzinga caught up with him
between business trips to fire a few questions at him.
In a nutshell, what is bull's eye investing?
You're just trying to get relative returns. When it's up 30, you
want to be up 35. In a secular bear market, your bench mark isn't
the stock market, your bench mark is zero. How much better than
zero did I do. Because you cannot trust the stock market to give
you those long term higher returns. We're 12 years into this
secular bear. We're getting to where we can say it's closer to
the end of it. We're still not quite there yet.
It seems like such a fluid subject. Did anything change
between books?
Not really. The basic principles I started coming to and laying
out in the late '90s. I was calling for a secular bear moving to
a long term bonds and zero coupon bonds. Could you see a bubble
happening? Yes. I talked then about buying all of the things that
you would talk about from a perspective when you can see a bubble
forming. I wouldn't suggest doing that type of thing today
because the market's changed. Could you see a bubble in housing?
Sure. Could you see the credit crisis coming because of sub-prime
debt? Yes. I did that, but that's different today. If I go back
and look at the basic principles of what I wrote about in the
first book, then no, the principles are the same. It's the
specific that get different.
Finally, and very on-topic, do you like Facebook (
FB
)?
You're asking me two questions really. The answer is yes I like
Facebook, but no I don't like the Facebook price. Be sure to put
a
link to my Facebook page in this article
. You almost feel like you have this two-sided thing. Gee, I
don't think I'd buy Facebook at this price but please do link to
my page and click 'like'. It has a value. Will it become as
valuable as it was at the price? Yeah, someday in the future but
I don't know if I've got the patience to wait around. I think
there are better opportunities. It looks like the investment
banks that got that stock out got every penny they could. They
didn't leave much for the investors for a pop. That's not
unusual.
Follow me
@BCallwood
.
(c) 2012 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment
advice. All rights reserved.