Thank you Zizzi, never heard anybody recommend anything from my blog, I think people take what the financial statements portray as the gospel truth,I take everything in investing with a pinch of salt,what I have found out in Kenya is that investing is still at its infancy people who are in wazua and another faceboook group I am in have a very hard time understanding anything I write, and I also have a very hard time understanding how they invest with so little knowledge.
I have been researching and reading about investing for the last 8 years so in 2013 I decided to open a demo account with finviz, 29 stocks later and in 2014 a year after I had opened the account was the time of reckoning and sure enough theory did match up with reality,and made a good return actually I opened a couple of accounts including shortselling portfolio but this got a beating and didn't do very well overall. The one portfolio that actually did very well was one that had the least stock 6 stocks to be exact it was up 150% in nine months. From this I have learned diversification is of less importance now I prefer to hold less than 25 stocks.
As for how to invest in the US its pretty simple all you need is to search for an online broker that takes non US residents, interactive brokers fits the bill here I actually opened an account with them but its not that easy. My plan is to start a hedge fund which I have, not limited by 66 stocks only traded on the NSE,if and when the NSE is overvalued investors have few options. I am opportunistic so long as I can understand the company, I will invest no matter where the stock exchange is located, on the other hand as your capital grows the NSE will become less attractive since the capital needed to invest on the NSE is small so much so that it can't move a pen, a case most pension schemes are currently experiencing more and more.
I really don't have a formula as to how I pick my stocks, most of the time I am looking for out of favor industry's, the 52 week low or anything else that wall street considers below par for investing, then I do my due diligence, to check if investors overreacted, or they are actually right. I have and use gurufocus as one of the screeners and the SEC for financial statements, from this you can make a rational judgement either to invest or pass which happens most of the time.
As for attracting capital this has been the biggest hurdle I have yet to conquer, most people can't believe than you can invest in the US successfully, and the recent recession has almost cast this in stone what they don't know is that this actually the time to invest, Europe is offering one of the best opportunities so is Korea and Japan, I have read a lot about value investing and though net-nets did in the past outperform before the internet era today screening for net-nets is like childs play. After a while researching about value investing you take what fits you and though still grounded by the same fundamental discipline of value investing I have come up with my own way of searching for my investments I call it value hidden in plain sight the net of it all is I am looking where there is an undervaluation and where the wind is on my back the odds are in my favor.