My investment knowledge has largely been acquired as a result of my own trial and error, reading, and studying of the investment process. After a rocky start in the mid 1990s I have finally discovered an investing "style" that I believe works if an investor has the right temperament, is willing to study business models and investment concepts, and is honest about his or her ability to invest successfully. I have outlined how I became interested in investing and why I created FocusInvestor.com in the following paragraphs.

My investment odyssey started when I applied for a loan when I was in the Air Force. I wanted to purchase a computer so I went to the local credit union to see about getting a small loan. When the loan officer asked me to list my assets and liabilities I was disturbed to notice that I had lots of liabilities and almost no assets. After a time of reflection I started a course of reading and studying everything I could get my hands on concerning investing.

This course of self study started with an appointment with a local stock broker who advised me that I should purchase shares in an international mutual fund and shares in an aggressive growth mutual fund. The international fund was to diversify my holdings and the aggressive growth fund was because I was young and could afford to "take some risks". He also advised that I should transfer the money I had in an IRA at my local credit union into purchasing the aggressive mutual fund. This seemed like a reasonable strategy (at the time) considering what I had read in the financial magazines and the few investment books I had read up to that point. I accepted the brokers advice and paid a nice 5% load on both funds (I had not yet come to realize how mutual fund fees can kill investment returns, where was Mr. Bogle when I needed him!).

The next big step in my investment education was discovering Dividend Reinvestment Programs (DRIPS) in which you can purchase shares from a company directly that had a DRIP plan established. I was a huge fan of this setup and bought about five stocks in this manner (this is how I thought of it, buying stock, not buying part of a business) so I could achieve an adequate level of diversification (My thoughts on diversification later changed dramatically).

This is how matters rested until I was lucky enough to have two events converge. The first incident was when I read a magazine article that discussed what a great job a person named Warren E. Buffett did on his letters to shareholders section in the Berkshire Hathaway annual reports. I looked up what the stock was trading at, saw the price (sticker shock resulted), and moved on. Then about two weeks later when I was looking for investing books to peruse at a book store and I discovered a book, The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein, that had just been published. I looked it over and it looked interesting (I have always been an avid biography reader), but I decided to wait until it arrived at the library to save money (imagine the compounding time I lost).

As a result my eyes were opened (and my life changed) when Mr. Lowenstein's book became available at the library on the base. I read the book and three things immediately struck me: 1) Mr. Buffett is an incredibly smart man with loads of integrity 2) His investment philosophy immediately appealed to me and 3) I needed to find more material to read on him! I had barely read a third of the book before I was on the phone calling the Berkshire office in Omaha from Germany asking if I could get five years worth of their latest annual reports. I was a bit surprised when they advised they would send the latest annual report free of charge but I would have to purchase the rest in what at the time was a two volume set of his letters to shareholders. All the other companies I had previously asked for annual reports had never had anything like this arrangement. I immediately sent them the money to have the set mailed over to Germany.

After I had finished reading the letters I was absolutely on a mission to learn more about his thoughts and to save enough money to purchase some shares in his company Berkshire Hathaway (luckily the "B" class shares came out and so I was able to pick up a few). I discovered Mr. Buffett had developed his investment philosophy from the teachings of Mr. Benjamin Graham and Mr. Philip Fisher. He was also heavily influenced by Mr. Charles T. Munger. I immediately began reading all their books, in Mr. Munger's case his writings and speeches, and discovered that investing was an absolutely fascinating subject. At the time I was in the Air Force performing a job I had no passion for but I had not been willing to leave until I discovered what I wanted to do. I had finally discovered my passion so I left the Air Force and enrolled in Indiana University (IU) to receive a degree in Finance.

I had a class on HTML programming at IU which resulted in my designing and creating my first website. The site was created with the idea that it would be interesting to have a site where news and information concerning Berkshire Hathaway would be disseminated. The site is still in existence today (although no longer updated on a regular basis) and the address is: www.geocities.com/rrockw.

I was also slightly surprised when I attended IU to discover that they didn't teach much concerning investing other than accounting, Beta, and the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). I thought the last two where especially disturbing (and misleading to other students who hadn't heard or read Mr. Buffett's thoughts on the subjects). After thinking of how I could contribute to both my own continuing investment education and the education of other potential investors I decided to create FocusInvestor.com. I had two purposes in mind:

1. I wished to create a site that allowed me work on what I am most interested in: the investment process, company research, and writing. I wanted to be able to share this information with others so they would have access to original, high quality, rational investment thoughts and research without fear of it being operated by a person without integrity. I was also hoping to develop a friendly, thoughtful interaction with other investors so we could all hone our investment analysis skills together.

2. I wanted to create a message board forum where like minded people could visit and feel free to discuss investing in a rational, thoughtful manner without fear of being personally attacked as has occurred at some message boards I have visited.

I hope you enjoy the site I have created and learn more about investing in the process. I will continue to work hard to provide all visitors with high quality work and useful material. If you learn something new as a result of your visit all the work that has gone into this site will be worth it. I hope to see all of you at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting and/or to join you in discussions on our message board.

My goal for FocusInvestor.com is to build a site that will be recognized for producing high-quality, original, investment articles and research. I would like the site to develop into a meeting place for rational investors interested in the focused investing philosophy. The site should also serve as a forum to discuss investing topics in a rational, non-threatening environment.