📈 Investing

Stocks won’t make you wealthy. Your behavior around stocks makes you wealthy. Stocks need your help. The only thing you control, your behavior, is the biggest factor in your success with stocks.

Nick Murray

Getting started 🏁

We are all different so will be our investments. 
Having our own strategy is essential. Everyone is different in terms of their interests in investing, risk preference, financial situation, life goals etc. It is better to understand and use their opinions as references than follow in blind faith.

Here’s why the best investing opportunities are not obvious
This is very true. Many are often herds and do not do detailed due diligence. They are fearful of buying low as catching the falling knife and only get excited as it rally. This is well depcited iin typical market psychology. To be successful investors, we need to be independent and often perecived as counterintuitive, controversial, contrarian or unpopular.

Balancing exploration and exploitation for profitable investments
Investing is about exploring and exploiting where we look for opportunities and taking advantage of opportunities. Have a balance of what we explore and exploit to ensure a good return for ourselves.

One thing I do that transforms my investment/trading journey
This transforms my investing journey. Yes, it is about starting investing journal. It was about owning the game and taking investing as a business venture. As I recorded, I know myself and I improve and compound thereon.

A cheat sheet to jump-start a profitable investing journey
It is difficult to learn about investment alone and worse, incur losses as part of learning. Find ways to jump-start. I am glad that I found gurus along the way to learn from and guide me through the journey.

Strategies 📝

Multi-baggers with growth companies 
A keystone post on investing. Buy well, buy low, keep validating and hold long of growth companies has been my main strategy. It explains my approach and rationale for investing in growth companies. Companies that can grow consistently over a long period will see their share price appreciate substantially. It is possible and rewarding in the longer term.

Market crashes are opportunities not to be wasted!
A keystone post on investing. Crashes and pullbacks are a characteristic of financial markert. We have to be able to learn, improve and profit with each crash.
A post to add rationality to ponder on during market crashes. It is a time to evaluate our portfolio and take a disciplined and principled approach to buy high-quality companies and sell low-quality companies.

Managing losses: A very important skill that investors and traders must have
The ability to manage losses is essential. Else, losses will be sucking out our hard-earned profits and worse, our capital.

Using technical analysis to time the market bottom
Yes, it is not possible to time the bottom reliably. What we are aiming for is not to get to the bottom but near the bottom; with better average cost prices than the other alternatives.

The bad and good of greed in investing/trading
Financial markets are driven by two powerful emotions – Greed and Fear. Let’s delve further into “greed”, its impact on us and how we can manage and make use of it.

Are investing research reports useful?
Analysts’ research reports are a good source of information for most investors. They may not be always accurate or reliable. Use them well and jump-start our investing journey.

2022: My valuable lessons and changes made in investing
Ouch, a painful year! A reflection of the many mistakes made. They have to be the best lessons learnt and changes made (to be worthwhile). Never waste the mistakes made!

Learnings 📚📖 📝

100 Baggers: Stocks That Return 100-to-1 and How To Find Them by Christopher Mayer
I like this book with the simple concepts and studies to show that it is possible. Buy right and hold.

The Dhandho Investor by Mohnish Pabrai
I like this book. Low-risk, high return and uncertainty + few bets, big bets, and infrequent bets are the way to go; they are refreshing and can be contrary to conventional wisdom. 

The Art of Execution: How the world’s best investors get it wrong and still make millions by Lee Freeman-Shor
A good book worth reading. A study of 1.866 investments representing 30,874 trades made by 45 of the world’s top investors over 7 years. The top investors can be wrong most of the time and still make alot of money. It is about how much money you allocate to each investing idea and what you will do with your losing and winning positions.

What I learned about investing from Darwin by Pulak Prasad
A great book on how Pulak Prasad, founder of Nalanda Capital that manages about $5 billion, approaches investing.

Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline, and a Winning Attitude by Mark Douglas
To achieve consistent results in trading is beyond market and technical analysis. The book delves deep in the mindset and attitude aspects of trading. Very worth reading for traders and even for investors too.

The Warren Buffett Way by Robert G. Hagstrom
I like this book; a good summary of Warren Buffett’s investing approach. Investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.

The Education of a Value Investor by Guy Spier
Know yourself. Be yourself and be the best of yourself. Aware of the irrational brain. Beyond you to others.

Nothing But Net by Mark Mahaney
10 lessons by legendary tech analyst, Mark Mahaney

Everyone is different 🧑 👧👱👩‍🦰

These are not strategies. Everyone defines them differently and some have a shallow understanding; causing misunderstanding and confusion. We need to develop our own understanding and approach which we are comfortable with.

The great investing myth (1): Buy low, sell high
The great investing myth (2): Buy and hold
The great investing myth (3): Know macro investing + Predict the future
The great investing myth (4): Dividends matter
The great investing myth (5): Concentration versus diversification
The great investing myth (6): Being right 
The great investing myth (7): Earnings expectation + share price reaction
The great investing myth (8): Trusting the company
The great investing myth (9): Being a contrarian
The great investing myth (10): Time in the market versus timing the market 
The great investing myth (11): Generalisations to make money