Investment strategies

Months ago my Dad asked me to attend a multi-level marketing seminar which involves Voice Over Internet Protocol (V.O.I.P) products. He wanted to attend the seminar personally but he asked me to attend the seminar primarily for two reasons first, he just did not understand what the product is all about and second he had another meeting to attend.

So I just attended the seminar in his behalf. A very eloquent and well dressed american gave the presentation. He sounded very convincing. Without a doubt, the product was equally good as well. However, what interested me was the sales pitch he made when asked he people to join the company. According to him, if you are an entrepreneur and you wanted to succeed in your business, a good business strategy is to find something that would be a big hit in the future.

You then spend your resouces on it. For investors, one of your investment strategies is to invest in companies that does this exactly this. He further makes his point by stating that the Microsoft, a $ 200 Billion dollars company which happens to be one of the richest and one of the most successful company in the world, is one of the companies that employs this business strategy. Surely you would invest in Microsoft if they would knock on your door and ask you to invest in their company. But let's just pretend for a moment that it is the year 1978.

A group of casually dress, long haired, hippie looking geeks came knocking at your door asking you to invest in their company or even work for them. They said their product is something called "computer software" and that it would change the world in the years to come. That skinny little geek at the left side wearing a blue shirt at the bottom of the picture said you would regret it if you wouldn't invest in their company. Would you be convinced with their investment strategies? Would you have invested your time or your money? Eventually after several years, those who stayed with the company became millionaires and some of them even became billionaires.

Unfortunately, those who left after several years did not enjoy the financial blessings that the company earned. Nobody expected that those casually dressed, long haired, hippie looking geeks would make billions and change the world years later. But those who invested in them truly reaped the benefits.

The presentation ended with the speaker asking the audience to join the multi-level marketing scheme of the new VOIP product. No doubt, the sales pitch and the product was good. Unfortunately, experience tells me that any multi-level marketing (MLM) based business will only be good for a couple of years, after that most MLM business switch to traditional marketing because of market saturation. If they were asking people to buy shares of stocks, I might have heeded the call and purchased such. Investing in companies who has the foresight to know the trend in the future is always part of good investment strategies. Since VOIP is the next trend in the future it is certain that I will look back and say that I'm glad I invested.

Oh before I forget, that skinny little geek wearing the blue shirt was Bill Gates and obviously the company that he was reffering to was Microsoft.

Which you could know more about investment strategies ? Visit the blog of Zigfred Diaz where he writes about several interesting topics such as investments, financial management, business, making financial online and How to invest in the Philippine stock market