This one will be a nice little quick diddy, but it is oh so important. I was sitting down over the holiday weekend scanning over my portfolio and began to analyze my positions. How much did I know about each position and, more importantly, what do I not know about my positions. This led me to think:

Do you even know what you own?

I began to run through each one of my positions and ask these questions:

1) Have I done a D30 analysis? (You can insert your own valuation tool here).

2) What is the valuation that I have on the position?

3) What is the management team like? (History, Latest Moves, Conference call promises, etc.)

4) What is the institutional opinion of the company? (Targets, ownership, short percentage, etc.)

5) What, in the future, can have effects on the company? (Interest rate, tax cuts, foreign currency, etc.)

I looked through each of my companies and realized that there are a few companies that I own that I may not be fully aware of the answers to each of these questions.

Now I must answer them. 

I said this was going to be short so I will wrap it up. I encourage you all going forward to not only look at the first two questions (valuation) but also make sure that you know how the market views the company, what could have effects on the company that are out of their control, and also dig into the management a bit further. Remember that you are putting your hard earned money into each position, so you better know as much as you can.

As always, please feel free to leave any comments below.