{"id":7426,"date":"2012-10-29T08:04:30","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T14:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/?p=7426"},"modified":"2013-05-07T18:32:14","modified_gmt":"2013-05-08T00:32:14","slug":"profile-of-an-investor-an-accountant-who-is-a-cautious-investor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/profile-of-an-investor-an-accountant-who-is-a-cautious-investor\/","title":{"rendered":"Profile of an Investor – An Accountant Who is a Cautious Investor"},"content":{"rendered":"

At age 61, Earle McEwen has been a CPA for many years, but only began investing in the stock market<\/strong>\u00a0(using the services of a professional broker) about ten years ago.<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0Until then, his capital was invested in raising seven children with his wife, Karen, an Idaho farm girl. \u00a0He also started a computer store in 1979 which failed, followed by many successful years as a partner at Hood & Strong, an accounting firm in San Francisco. \u00a0He moved to Idaho 18 years ago to run his own accounting business. \u00a0Then, three years ago, he decided he wanted to more fully understand his investments and be more involved in the decision making process.<\/span> \u00a0He has worked hard for his money and was seeing some evidence that relying on professional brokers posed more of a risk than he was willing to take. \u00a0It seemed that professional brokers, much like mutual fund managers, were pressured by the need to appear to be responding to the market fluctuations. \u00a0He just wanted more control over what happened to his money!<\/p>\n

Mr. McEwen has two main investment goals:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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  1. Preserving the value of the money he has taken a long time to get, and<\/li>\n
  2. Building an income stream for retirement.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    He calls himself a “scared” or cautious investor. \u00a0That is why he immediately began making contacts with other individual investors. \u00a0One group he found pooled their money, then tried to convince each other how to invest it. \u00a0Being more interested in an exchange of ideas while he managed his own investments led him to<\/span> The American Association of Individual Investors (AAII)<\/a>. \u00a0There were not any meetings occurring at that time in the Boise area; and there were not enough members in the Boise area to meet the criteria of a “chapter<\/a>“, but AAII would help handle the email for a “discussion group.” \u00a0Mr. McEwen took the initiative to organize a group<\/em> and there has been a monthly meeting since then, usually in a room at one of the public libraries.<\/p>\n

    While being an independent CPA who specializes in QuickBooks and filing taxes for local small businesses makes it easier for him to read a financial statement<\/a>, it doesn’t make him a stock market guru.<\/em> \u00a0<\/strong>He points out that he still has to do things like:<\/p>\n