Value investors and long term investors generally like to make money. Losing money, on the other hand, is one of the biggest threats that these investors like to avoid. In the words of Warren Buffett, the number one rule of investing is never to lose money! His second rule, of course, was never to forget rule number one.

Since investors are essentially individual people, it's important for investors to reduce financial risks in their day to day lives. With lowered risks and increased financial protection, investors are then able to have greater confidence in their investing decisions. It can be a dismal affair when an investor fails to protect themselves financially and are left to sell important assets like their family home.

One major way that an investor can increase their financial protection is to get car insurance. This kind of insurance is purchased for cars and other types of vehicles like trucks and motorcycles. The main reason that an investor should get car insurance is to ensure financial protection from physical damage and bodily injuries particularly from car accidents or other unexpected road related hazards, like natural disasters. For those astute with their money, especially value investors, car insurance is highly important to protect against liability that could come from an accident.

There have been several liability cases in the United Kingdom where people were expected to pay out hundreds of thousands to even millions of pounds of compensation. If this were to happen to you, your financial assets would be at risk, including all of your value investments that you built up over the years. Car insurance gives you greater peace of mind because the insurers would be the ones to handle all or at least most of the compensation payout. This would mean that your personal assets are protected.

According to the Office for National Statistics in the UK, there were 111,320 total accidents on major roads in 2002. While there were 221,751 total accidents on all roads combined in 2002. These are staggering figures, and demonstrates the importance of car insurance to not only protect your finances but also to protect your car from damage and your body from harm. In fact, car insurance has been recognized to be of upmost importance in the UK that the government recently passed a new law in June 2011 which asserts that all vehicles must have a valid insurance policy if kept on public roads.

The recent Value Investing Conference produced a lot of good stock ideas from managers in attendance. For instance, Jeffrey Ubben of ValueAct Capital is an activist investor who only makes 3 or 4 new investments each year and holds them for an average of three years.

Ubben's newest position is in Motorola Solutions (MSI). Claude Leveille of Courant Investment Management also does 3 or 4 trades in a year, noting that he's extremely patient to wait for "fat pitches". He uses no leverage and only holds long positions, and currently has about 25% of his fund assets in cash. Leveille has been buying South Korean equities and also US large caps in the healthcare sector. Michael Kao of Akanthos Capital Management is looking for investments that will protect against inflation, and he recommended going long the Hong Kong dollar as an inflation hedge.

Some must-read value investing books include, 'The Little Book That Beats the Market' by Joel Greenblatt. The author is one of the best hedge fund managers as well as an adjunct professor of Columbia Business School. This value investing book has been written in an easy to understand manner and includes a website where one can easily find companies to invest in. Joel Greenblatt's first value investing book, 'You can be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits' is not as simplified as his other book and is more suited to the advance investor. 'The Little Book of Value Investing' by Christopher H. Browne explains value investing, and states a method of buying undervalued stocks that earn good long term returns. It is suitable for beginners as well as advanced investors.