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Company name Tessera Technologies, Inc.
Stock ticker TSRA
Live stock price [stckqut]TSRA[/stckqut]
Confident Investor Rating Poor

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=tsra

Tessera Technologies, Inc. is a holding company. The Company operates through its subsidiaries in two segments: Intellectual Property and DigitalOptics. Its Intellectual Property segment is managed by Tessera Intellectual Property Corp., including managing the patent and licensing portfolios of its subsidiaries, Tessera, Inc. and Invensas Corporation (Invensas). Its Intellectual Property business, consists of engineering, licensing, account administration and litigation teams, generates revenue from patented innovations through license agreements with semiconductor companies and outsourced semiconductor assembly and test companies. DigitalOptics Corporation and its subsidiaries (DOC) operate its DigitalOptics business. The Company is focused on developing three-dimensional packaging solutions. In June 2012, the Company’s wholly owned subsidiary, DigitalOptics Corporation (DOC), acquired certain assets of Vista Point Technologies from Flextronics International Ltd.
Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I do not think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in this stock. It is not possible to confidently invest in a company that is not currently profitable.

If you would like to understand how to evaluate companies like I do on this site, please read my book, The Confident Investor.

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The absolute first thing that a new investor should do before investing a single penny is too build up an emergency savings account. This account should be equal to 6 months of after-tax income. I spoke of this in a previous article and you may want to jump back and read it.

The Simple Dollar recently posted an article that gives a key technique in building up a savings account. Simply go to a different bank then the one that you currently patronize and open a new savings account. Then, have your employer take 10% (or more) of your after-tax income and automatically deposit that money in your new savings account. You will be far less likely to spend this saved money if it is in a separate account in a separate bank.

As I have said before on this site and in my book, The Confident Investor, if you do not have an emergency fund to fall back on in hard times, you will always be nervous about your investment decisions. Eliminate this nervousness and you start to become a Confident Investor.

Check out the Simple Dollar article – it is worth your time.

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I was really happy to see this article in the Wall Street Journal.  I think it is much more efficient and profitable for investors to forego managed mutual funds and invest in index funds.

I think that most people should only have 20-40% of their portfolio in funds and the balance should be in high quality growth stocks like those on my Watch List and that I describe in my book, The Confident Investor.

Below are the first few paragraphs of the WSJ article.  I encourage you to jump over and read the entire article by Kirsten Grind.

Investors are jumping out of mutual funds managed by professional stock pickers and shifting massive amounts of money into lower-cost funds that echo the broader market.

Through November, investors pulled $119.3 billion from so-called actively managed U.S. stock funds in 2012, the biggest yearly outflow since 2008, according to the latest data from research firm Morningstar Inc.

At the same time, they poured $30.4 billion into U.S. stock exchange-traded funds. When combined with bond ETFs, total inflows to such funds were $154 billion, the largest since 2008.

The move shows growing investor distaste for volatility, as the dot-com crash in the early 2000s, the financial crisis in 2008 and recent botched episodes such as last May’s Facebook Inc. initial public offering have shaken investor confidence.

It also reflects the fact that many money managers of stock funds, which charge fees but also dangle the prospect of higher returns, have underperformed the benchmark stock indexes. As a result, more investors are choosing simply to invest in funds tracking the indexes, which carry lower fees and are perceived as having less risk.