Being prepared to make mistakes, lose money & feel like an idiot are essential ingredients for generating long term 'alpha' amid a very uncertain world.
Find out in this Mello presentation in Chiswick (London), my biggest & most painful stock picking clangers over the past 20 years, what I've learnt & importantly how this has changed my investment process.
The slides can be downloaded here from my LinkedIn account.
Stocks owned : EQLS, AGFX, Pfizer, Bristol Myers, Roche, WATR, VCT, MBH, ASTO, IOM, TR25, ESYS, ELCO, IHC, Paypal & AOM Elsewhere, I'm also paid by Vox Markets (as a contractor) to interview interview fund managers, capital market experts & companies (re EQLS, VRCI, BELL, FIN, AVG, AVCT, LLAI, VLG, FADL, SUP, ELCO, LORD , MPAC & ONC). I believe all these stocks are clients of Vox.Lastly my 24 year HIT RATE is only 62%. Meaning 38% of the time I lose money (ie often wrong) - albeit my winners are (on average) 1.5x larger than my losers. Please Do Your Own Research. more »
Some wise words in there Paul, when you've been through a couple of big selloffs it's character building as they say.
Many thanks WoSS for the kind words.
The slides try to help others avoid some of the same mistakes I’ve made over my past 30 years of stock picking.
Thanks Paul. Resilience is definitely key.
Seeing your PF drop by a large chunk can be very challenging but it's important not to panic as more often than not it's too late and you'll do more damage than good.
I am still recovering from some big errors in 22/23 but I am a better investor for it.
It's interesting Paul, I was taking another look yesterday and its such an individual thing. How much risk can you take? Do you need the money within next year, how much pain can you take in a bear market? Long term/short term etc etc I started end 90's, usual punting on diamond/gold miners or internet companies. Worked great until the crash almost wiped me out, then moved on to deep research where I had to know everything about the company. Trouble was I had no skill at all for picking long term winners and Id then spent so long looking onto a company I couldn't bring myself to sell when things didn't pan out as planned. So I wasted 10 years before I stumbled onto something which worked for me, at least everyone has YouTube now.
I wrote down the top things most important to me (yes I was that bored) Turns out I'm really quite dull as most of it has nothing to do with valuations or charts or super cycles or any of the sexy stuff. As you say Paul, find what works for you and do more of it.
Dear Paul
Thank you so much for sharing your slides, I recognise many of the downs and the learnings . You and the other Paul are actively helping me improve my investing journey, along with the many comments on the site from experienced investors
Hi Paul. Making mistakes and feeling like an idiot will only be positive to generating alpha if all of the following conditions are met: 1) Recognise your mistakes. 2) Improve your process to prevent the same mistakes being made again. 3) Follow the updated process. It's a simple as that!
Many thanks John LA & very best of luck wrt all the stock picks. Investing is certainly not easy.
