Why The Smaller Investor Has Advantages Over Huge Multinational Funds When It Comes To Higher Investment Returns

You would be forgiven in thinking that with all the professional managers, funds and resources. at their disposal that investment funds would win head over heels against the smaller investor like you and I. In fact this is not at all the case – smaller investors have several advantages over the big funds and have every chance of beating their returns on investments. Here’s why:

The individual investor does not have to invest millions and so they can invest in small caps (tiny growth companies) that have the potential to grow many times over. These stocks are typically far too illiquid for funds to enter.

The smaller investor can get in and out of a stock with the simple click of a mouse or a phone call (and get roughly the same sale price per share). The larger funds have to gradually sell their holdings in a company (they may have millions of shares to offload – not an easy or quick thing to achieve).

Individual investors can effectively trade positions for small gains – something that larger funds simply do not have the ability to do.

On top of this, the Internet has more or less facilitated the smaller investor to have access to the same information at the same time as the big city fund managers. Arguably, the individual investor also has the added advantage of speed – a fund manager may have to get approval in order to buy into a company (not a case for the individual investor) and cannot take advantage of special situations (such as buying on breaking news and so on).

Remember however, if you really want to become a “professional investor” – one who is savvy enough to beat the market and essentially make a living from investments then you need to learn as much as you can about how the market works, how to analyse companies, the part psychology plays in driving markets and how to create an investment/trading system that’s right for you. Even the masters of investing such as Warren Buffet and Jim Slater all started from scratch.

Warren Buffet once did not know what the PE of a company meant. Jim Slater once did now know how to read the balance sheet of a company. They educated themselves and discovered how to pick stocks that have excellent potential – you could be doing the same. The first step to investment is to invest in yourself and your education. To offer an overused yet apt phrase – KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!