It’s Not Batting Average that is Important, It’s Slugging Percentage

Each investor’s strategy is and likely should be different from the next person. It’s good to be different. I think too many focus on cloning others when it’s a mistake. It’s not who they really are. There are 30,000 Elvis impersonators, and their combined income is far less than the original. Instead of cloning someone, take the valuable lessons and nuggets you obtain from studying the greats, and apply it to your own processes, experiences, and personality. This is what intelligent fanatics do. Be original.

In general, microcap investing lends itself more to an active strategy because many microcaps are small emerging companies and things can change quickly. You can’t afford to buy and forget. You need to buy and verify your thesis, and the smaller the company the more often you verify. When you initially make an investment, you can’t say “I’m going to hold this for 1-2-3-10 years”. No, you are going to hold it as long as management executes. This could be 3 months or it could be 30 years. In microcap, hold times are skewed towards the former (3 – 18 months) because there aren’t many microcaps that will prevail over the long-term.

You need to have a high hurdle for new ideas but not too high that you never allow any new investments in. No company, especially a small one, is perfect. They all have a wart or two or fifty, but warts can be removed. It’s why it’s important to stair step into a position and add as management executes and proves themselves. If they don’t execute you sell. Let their execution determine your position sizing, not some formula you read in a book.

I’m reminded by this quote I featured in The Art of Holding:

“The most successful investors I worked with, those who made the most money, all had one thing in common: the presence of a couple of big winners in their portfolios. Any approach that does not embrace the possibility of winning big is doomed.”

– Lee Freeman-Shor

It’s not batting average that is important, it’s slugging percentage. You can have a lot of losers and still win big if you let your winners run and quickly kill your losers. What I tend to do over time is move more and more capital into my best performing management teams. For example, a large percentage of my portfolio is in four companies which I’ve owned for 1 year, 4 years, 5 years, and 7 years.

I also hold a handful of smaller positions that I hope will mature into what I think they can become. There tends to be a lot of turnover in my smaller positions. The smaller positions represent the minor-league prospects that I’m looking to bring up to the major leagues if they perform. Some will and some won’t. Management execution or lack thereof will decide their fate. It’s impossible to have the conviction at the beginning of an investment that you have at the end of a successful investment. Conviction, just like trust, takes time to develop.

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