First steps

Let's see where this goes.

This is going to be my personal investing journal. I’m not writing for anyone else. I’m hardly an expert at investing. Or business. Or stock picking. I’m actually a political consultant who is trying to reinvest his income at high rates of returns. “High rates of returns” means that I’m aiming for a 15% CAGR. The only possible reason to try to select a few businesses instead of indexing is to obtain above average returns. I’m fairly certain that I’m going to fail but I least I’ll fail at doing something I like. Three years from now I’ll take a look at my returns and decide if I should keep doing this or if I’m better off putting my money on an Index Fund and go read some books.

My first steps in this journey began around 2019. I had some money in my pockets and having heard a friend was investing in the stock market decided to try it. I obviously did everything you are not supposed to do. I picked stocks based on macro views (without much thought), I tried technical analysis and after a year of disastrous returns (lost almost 75% of my money) I came across “The Intelligent Investor” by Ben Graham in the midst of the Coronovirus Crash. It’s safe to say that it changed the way I thought about the market and investing in general. Having read Graham I took all the money I had left and bought a basket of 30 net nets . So I’m officially declaring 2020 my first year in “investing” given the fact that what I was doing before that can hardly be called “investing”.

I’m not sure if I’ll track portfolio returns here or not. That’s not important. I’ll mainly use it to write about different companies that I find interesting in order to get a better understanding of each company. My strategy is to build a very concentrated portfolio of overlooked small caps with a long term approach. By concentrated I mean that I don’t want to own more than 6-8 stocks. My current portfolio consists of:

• Caldwell Partners International, Inc. ($CWLPF)

• FullNet Communications, Inc. ($FULO)

• Parks! America, Inc. ($PRKA)

• Solitron Devices, Inc. ($SODI)

• Truxton Corporation ($TRUX)

• Vertu Motors PLC ($VTMTF)

The only “original” idea here is Caldwell Partners International. Every other idea came from someone else, I looked into it, found it interesting and decided to invest. As time goes by and I learn more about business and investing I hope I’ll be able to build a portfolio of original ideas but I have no shame nor do I feel embarrassed about the fact that I’m cloning somebody else. That’s perfectly fine for me as long as I understand the business and I agree with the thesis.

Anyways, this has been long enough. Let’s see where this takes me. The goal is to still be doing this 40 years from now.

PS. If it isn't obvious by now, English is not my first language.