Stock Picking is a Game of Self-Confidence
If you’ve been a stock picker for 10+ years a small part of you always wonders if the last big win you had was your last. You must not believe that.
Time and interest are the primary components of the power of compounding. The hard part is we don’t know how much time we have. Identifying the losers in your portfolio is as important as holding winners because losers dilute your returns. Losers are a waste of your time.
During a lifetime, you will likely own 10-20 big winners and hundreds of failed impostors. Time and interest are the primary components of the power of compounding. The hard part is we don’t know how much time we have. Identifying the losers in your portfolio is as important as holding winners because losers dilute your returns. Losers are a waste of your time.
“Take your losses quickly and your profits slowly because your objective is not just to be right but to make big money when you are right”
– Bill O’Neil
Many investors do a post-mortem analysis of their investment decisions. A port-mortem is analyzing an investment after you’ve killed it (sold). You may have sold because it was a bad investment or because it was a good investment. The objective of the post-mortem isn’t necessarily to review the individual investment (ie this was a bad investment or good investment) as much as it is to review if making the investment and holding was consistent with your investment strategy and principles. Here is a good video by Steve Jacobs on post-mortem analysis:
Last year my wife and I sat down with an estate attorney to make changes to our Will. Embarrassingly we kept pushing this off for far too long. The attorney asked me, “How will your wife be taken care of if you die?”. I replied jokingly, “I’m not worried about it. She will marry again quickly.” My wife threw a quick glare in my direction 🙂
But in all seriousness, as soon as I got married I created a 911 file. The 911 file is password protected and only my wife can access it. If God decides my time is up, whether it’s later today, next year, or in 40 years, my wife can go to this file to retrieve all the important information on our finances. Brokerage accounts, bank accounts, people I trust that can help, etc. Since I’m heavily invested in a relatively small amount of illiquid public and private company investments I try to keep an updated and detailed account of my thoughts on each investment.
A post-mortem analysis is one thing. Writing down your thoughts on an investment that is to be read and understood upon your demise is a whole other exercise. My hope in providing my thoughts in such a way was to give some sort of guidance. The intention is that many of the acorns I’ve planted that have started to grow will hopefully turn into large oak trees that can support my wife and family long after I’m gone.
The 911 file is organized very simply with my thoughts on each investment outlined in the following structure which I update periodically:
When we sat down with the estate attorney I slid the printed 911 file over to him and said this is all my wife would need. He took 30 seconds, scanned over it, and slid it back and said, “This won’t be necessary. Mr. Cassel all your investments will be sold soon after you die. There is no possible way a portfolio such as yours can be managed by people that don’t have your experience.” As I let that sink in for a moment, I quickly realized he was right. In a fast paced, quickly changing environment of microcap investing which are primarily small emerging public companies, it’s very hard to simply transfer investment knowledge. It was quite stupid of me to think that my positions could survive past me, not to mention the undue stress doing so would put on my wife.
I continue to keep the 911 file updated, even though it won’t be useful to my wife upon my demise. Why? The exercise of writing it helped me invert and balance out my bullishness and biases. It focuses me on when I need to sell. It’s been seven years since I started the 911 file and I can point to three separate occasions where the thought process saved me a lot of money.
It’s OK to fall in love with your microcap positions. I know I love mine. You just have to be prepared to divorce quickly. You can’t let your ego get in the way when the facts change. You need to know your investments better than most so you can spot when something has changed long before other investors. As Keynes said, “When facts change, I change my mind.”
I’m still a full-time investor today not because of my gains, but because of the losses I didn’t take.
Some other articles you might enjoy:
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