People can invest for many reasons. What's yours? Do you desire regular overseas holidays? Want to be able to purchase a sports car and get rid of the used car you have now?
Or is something like your children's wellbeing or your retirement driving you to want more than you have now? It's the longer-term goals and desires that demand better investing decisions because they-
1) are personally important (not getting the sports car won't kill you).
2) are possibly open-ended in price (how much do you really need to retire comfortably for 20 years?).
3) can't really be done any other way effectively (bank interest doesn't pay enough over the years).
In contrast to long-term investing, many investors sell out of stocks in fear when the stock is down. They short-circuit long-term gains with short-term fear and greed.
You need companies that can pay you a solid dividend and/or reward you with steady growth for 10 years to come. That's actually a reasonable and attainable goal.
SEEK Limited (ASX: SEK) is a good example of a market-leading website, seek.com.au, being a great growth stock now, yet later on possibly becoming a dividend river of gold as it matures. The company is expanding its job search business into Asia and offers training and education to become a vital part of workforce development.
Brambles Limited (ASX: BXB) is a global supply-chain logistics service provider. Famous for its CHEP brand pallets and containers, it becomes interconnected with companies all over the world through their shipping and warehousing needs. Businesses like internet companies will come and go, but storing and moving goods will always be necessary. When you're big like Brambles, you know they will be around for a long time.
Domino's Pizza Enterprises Ltd. (ASX: DMP) runs the pizza takeaway store network that has been steadily rising in earnings and share price. Fancy finance skills aren't needed to recognise the future potential of this growth company. As long as the company is expanding in Australia and now in Japan, the rising revenues will drive profits up over time. You can imagine people eating Domino's pizza ten years from now easily.
