Old School Value: The past, present, and future.

April 14th, 2011 by Jae Jun

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Along with the site design, I updated many of the pages and one of them was the about me page. After four years, it needed an update to better reflect what the site stands to achieve.

So let’s take a short break from the regular investment posts and read about the past, present and future of old school value.

Short Background

My dad started “investing” when I was in school but has since turned to day trading in order to pick up daily profits. A profit each day was not guaranteed but I clearly remember the range of emotions he displayed when making and losing money.

Like many people, he acted on stock tips from friends, bought into story stocks and hoped for the lotto stocks.

A lot of our savings was poured in to fund his trading and having witnessed this while growing up, it was no wonder that I grew an incredible negative bias towards stocks.

Stocks were a gamble.

How I got started

But one day, I became an adult and left home. I got a job and started to think about retirement. I got a retirement account through my employer and didn’t know what to do. So I stuck my money in a random mutual fund that had the highest return over the past 3 years.

Around the same time, I also ended up signing up for variable life insurance and realized my returns were 0% while the insurance sales agent collected all the fees and commissions.

I forfeited my $3,000 account and decided to manage my own money.

How Old School Value got started

Without having ever taken a finance, accounting or economics class, I didn’t know where to start, so I started  by reading books. The Intelligent Investor was the first investment book I read, and to be honest, I found it to be the driest, most boring book I have ever read.

But I kept at it and read more books. Finally, it came to a point where I needed a way to record and apply everything I had read. That’s where Old School Value comes in. It started out as a journal to keep track and to share what I had learned.

Old School Value stands for the old school methodologies of value investing. I have no interest in over leveraging, using complicated option strategies or using margin.

Old School Value Today

Old School Value is now in its fourth year.

Over the years, this site has evolved into a value investing service by offering free and paid stock analysis tools, stock screens and a forum for people to share ideas.

However, Old School Value continues to offer timeless educational material in order to bring as many people into the world of value investing.

The focus here is to keep the quality as high as possible. Rather than publish several articles a week with little substance, I prefer to keep quiet if it is of little importance. This way, I won’t be overloading you with information and you can go through the articles at your own pace.

This is the same for the tools I offer. If something is not worth selling, then it is not worth giving away.

Keeping it Real

I am just a regular person. This site is not some second persona where I try to make myself look like a stock picking genius. I’m not.

What I hope people get out of this site is to become open to new ideas, learn new concepts and methods, and then to share it with others. At the same time, I hope people continue to challenge my very own views.

Too many investment sites lack honesty and candidness. If I make a mistake, I will own up to it before anyone else. You will hear about my successes as well as my failures.

My returns are not inflated or displayed in a way to make it seem better than it really is. Being independent, open, honest, transparent and approachable are vital keys for my own development as an investor.

Ethical Investing

Investing in stocks is investing in businesses, and there are certain types of businesses that I do not wish to support in real life which I apply to my investing. The temptation is always there to make money regardless of industry or company, but I believe investing requires social responsibility.

For this reason, I do not invest in any of the following:

Gambling stocksAlcohol stocksTobacco stocksAdult entertainment stocksMy Mission

In case you have not read the footer, my crazy goal one day is to help sponsor 1,000 children around the world. Currently I do this through a Christian organization called Compassion

The experience of having visited three of the children I sponsor in Colombia, really opened my eyes and heart to what is important. My goal could always be to make more money, but there is more to life than self satisfaction and living comfortably.

I’m not a philanthropist or somebody seeking to change the world. Nor am I am better person than anybody else. I just happen to be moved by helping less fortunate people, while other people are moved by different things.

Through Old School Value, I aim to offer quality tools, articles and information for the small investors. On a personal level, I hope to become independent so that I can focus on giving back as much as possible.

You’ve read my background, you’ve read the objective and you’ve read the mission. That’s what old school value is about and me.