Holy fucking shit. This is my 500th post on that blog!
You know what? You won't believe it, but I NEVER take a look at the number of posts of my blog. But yesterday, I took a look at it and I saw that the number was 499. What a fucking coincidence!
What a useless coincidence in the history of mankind! Or, would I say, what a useless coincidence in the history of the basement where I write my posts! Maybe I'm giving myself too much importance here. Let's just qualify that coincidence as a moment like another.
So, for this post #500, let's take a look at 6 years and a half of blogging here and tell me either what was the first post you've read on my blog or the post that you liked the most.
My answers to these two questions:
1- First post I've read: the first one I wrote;
2- The post I liked the most: probably a post where I used some nasty words like the one where I said that technical analysis meant seeing fucking patterns in a curve. Like some fucking shape of a cunt. Or some others where I wrote that you should believe in nothing.
I could try to make you believe that anything is possible and that a specific recipe will make you rich but I’d rather make you feel some unease.
1. Hard to recall - I have enjoyed many over the past few years
RépondreSupprimer2. Again, difficult to choose one. But, I can easily say that in the posts where you are being authentically “you”, these make me want to keep coming back. You write about interesting investing topics that matter to you as a smarter-than-the-average-idiot-Canadian-investor...whether a post on an individual stock you find interesting, a famous investor worth watching, or a strategy you see as having merit (ie. ROE above % threshold, growing ROIC, etc), or the bigger picture life stuff (life goals for investing, when to retire)...all very relevant to me (also a 41year old Canadian investor!). When mixed with your way of being a no-b.s. writer, who throws the occasional/enjoyable curse word...makes it that much more interesting. Keep being you!
Thanks! I don't know when I've been "authentically me" though!
SupprimerCongratulations Terminator on your 500th blog post...
RépondreSupprimerI can't remember my favorite post but it had something to do with Bill Ackman taking the biggest shit in his pants after the Valient fiasco...I'm still laughing at that one...
You also game me the inspiration to start my own blog on investing which over time has morphed into something else (a place to store information about the stocks I own and stocks I'm interested in)
Keep up the good work...You're operating at the grassroots level and that's important...
Congratulations again..
Thanks Gavin! You're the only metaphysical guy here!
SupprimerTLDR:
RépondreSupprimer1. I first came across your blog in fall of 2015.
2. My favorite posts were your portfolio updates, where you listed your holdings and performance. In hindsight, I also appreciate your posts on predictability of companies and stability of their business which I initially completely ignored when reading about companies. From the newer posts, I like the new year community contest for top picks.
Here is my longer version story for question 1:
SupprimerIn early 2015, I had learned about stock market after being upset with the low interest rate my "high interest" savings account paid while being too poor to do anything else with my money. I come from Eastern Europe, where growing up nobody knew anything about "investing" other than some failed ponzi schemes from early 90s after fall of communism, after which investing became a bad word synonymous with fraud. I never learned or was told about stock market, bonds, pensions, or compound interst growing up. After reading about investing on the internet and how I could get 8% steady eddy returns and live off a 4% withdrawal for the rest of my life, I went to my local bank as a good boy and told them I wanted to buy some growth mutual funds and got an appointment in early 2015 to speak with their branch "expert". As a result, I got a universal class A fund and some weird healthcare & tech fund through their "advisEr" which both charged about 2.5+% MER. The advisEr also recommended that I pulled all of my savings into an RRSP so that I had no cash after that day (keep in my mind I was a university student who was working to pay his tuition and living expenses and was not paying any income tax and explicitly told them I might need to withdraw the money in a few years). After a few months, I read up a little bit more and realized what bad advice and rip off deal I got through their salesman, who also had no fiduciary duty despite of their clever title and smart suit. I also learned that the funds performed really poorly and they ranked really poor compared to other funds. As a result I opened a discount brokerage account in my bank in spring of 2015, sold my class A mutual funds, and decided I will copy what the best fund I found was doing. This was Mawer New Canada fund which had many awards and really good performance track record. Unfortunately, I could not invest into it since it was closed to new investors, I was also too poor to be able to become a Mawer customer, and my bank did (and still does) not allow any of the Mawer funds in their accounts. So I though I would be a smart boy and I cross referenced their average purchase prices in the most recent quarterly reports and decided to buy some "blue chip" small cap Canadian stock which they bought at higher prices than what they were currently trading. This included some energy stocks and also HCG, which I bought at $42.50 per share in spring 2015 (more than 5 years later it trades at $21 and one of the oil companies went essentially belly up and I have also lost more than 93% in the other oil service company which I still hold). I thought I was a very smart boy who got great bargain on his purchases at the time (HCG was trading at over 55 previous summer).
I decided to do my "due diligence" by reading about the companies on the internet. So I googled HCG, read their presentation and annual report and decided to see if they had a video recording of their investor presentation since reading annual reports appeared too boring and tedious to me. They did not but I discovered that something called "BNN" existed by doing this video search. The BNN video on HCG included some eccentric looking but smooth talking hedge fund guy called Jason Donville, who recommended HCG as a good investment several times in the past. I was happy that some hot shot hedge fund guy thought so. He had many awards and had great performance. I think it was the top Canadian hedge fund for several years only open to millionaire accredited smart investors. Moreover, his explanations and rational finally made sense. Investing was not about some price voodoo and derivatives trading but about buying and holding great capital compounding businesses. So I googled him and his website and by doing so I also came across your blog. I though in finding DKAM and your blog, I found the greatest investment thing in Canada. You both had much better performance than Mawer and actually had a good story about why the stocks you held were great investments. I immediately signed up for DKAM's newsletter and started reading your old posts at work. I naively though investing was so easy at this point.
SupprimerJason was all about healthcare in 2015 and about how it was the best sector with secular tail winds which will continue to growth in an aging and declining population. Valeant and Concordia were some of his largest and highest conviction holdings with awesome performance. Moreover my bank advisEr also recommended a health care mutual fund to me just few months earlier and Mawer also held Valeant in the Canadian equity and in some interview posted about how revolutionary their business model was. Large US hedge funds also could not get enough of Valeant. I though I will follow the experts and I will buy healthcare. All the smart and rich people with the best track record are buying it and recommending it, what could go wrong? My portfolio will have great bank, energy, and healthcare stocks which I could buy cheaper than some big mutual/hedge funds managers. So, I then bought VRX in mid September 2015 for $293 per share. What a bargain, I though, since it traded at over $330 just weeks prior and I kept averaging down as Jason kept defending it during the downturn until March 2016. I currently still own my shares with a 76% loss more than 5 years later. Since Jason also stated that CXR was better than VRX and it was his biggest holding, I also though I would be clever by buying CXR. I first bought it in late September at $90 per share and kept averaging until July 2016 when I ran out of money and tears. When bankruptcy / being taken behind the shed by creditors was sure, I gave up and sold out in May 2018 for essentially a complete CXR loss at $0.36 per share minus the 9.95 commission, meaning I got out less than 1% of money I invested in CXR. I became very sad and disillusioned after this since all of my investments blew up (except for a very tiny position in CSU which I thought was the most risky holding since it way too expensive and very reluctantly bought after my alt-a bank, energy and healthcare fiasco). At this point, two thirds of my life savings were gone and most of them were locked up in an RRSP account, from which I will not be able to access them until 40+ years later.
Over the next few years, I have been reflecting on my own naivety, ignorance, and over-confidence. I have learned investing is very difficult and unpredictable. I have been to greedy to accept less than 1% bank interest rate or pay my 2.5+% MER fees and ironically I would have been better served by just keeping my money in a savings account and never investing. Jason and Penetrator have nonetheless opened my eyes to try to find great compounding companies for which I am very grateful. They both deserve high respect and gratitude for sharing their thoughts. I have been slowly trying to transition my portfolio in this direction and might soon even venture outside of Canada in search for the best companies. I have had a mental block which I still not been able to overcome in selling my losers to buy much more expensive higher quality names. It is very painful selling with a loss and buying things trading at three or more time higher multiples.
RépondreSupprimerThank you for all your hard work Penetrator and congratulations on 500 posts!!! You are my investing education hero.
Thank you, but I think that you should try to become your own hero. It's very dangerous to worship anybody.
SupprimerDon't worry, I will not be sacrificing any chickens on your altar. Not yet anyways. Maybe in the future, if I can learn to become a better investor and crawl out of my deficit hole. Now I am still on a potato diet with no chicken. I am not sure if sacrificing potatoes in my basement room will work.
Supprimer= = = = =
I am a little worried though about the tech stocks right now. It seems very reminiscent of the healthcare bubble I described above based on my first hand experience during my introduction to investing. I even heard Mawer talk about about how tech companies have new business paradigm... how stock analysts are claiming that expenses should be capitalized and we should look at adjusted earning and price per sale rather than actual free cash flow... how "boring" mutual and endowment fund managers are piling in so that they do not lag their benchmarks. After my healthcare fiasco, I actually dug through financial reports of several asset management companies, including Mawer who inspired me in my financial suicide mission. They also held Nortel, Valeant, etc just before and during the bubble bursting (so much for their bottom-up due diligence) and now they are all piling into Shopify and similar companies. There are also many retail "investors" who are even more ignorant than me when I bought my first stock who became to cocky doubling or tripling their money by holding onto the tech names and ETFs who are blindly buying up anything tech related - just like bitcoin and weed stocks. Many of them don't even know what a stock is or what market capitalization is let alone any financial statements or ratios. The Japanese whales using Middle Eastern money are also manipulating the options for some of these stocks to pump them even higher. I do not own any of the big tech or hot stocks. My portfolio trades at below 9x free cash flow. But I am still concerned since tech is about 27% of my current portfolio (CSU 7.74%, CTZ 7.60%, ENGH 7.19%, GIB.A 3.93%, CMG 0.52%). Any thoughts on this "new" paradigm of revolution in adjusted valuations? Any thoughts on how excessive options, convertible debt, and stock based compensation might be the same as excess debt of Valeant without appearing on the financial statements?
Congrats on 500 posts! I hope you continue for 5000 more...
RépondreSupprimer1) First post I read: Probably one about Donville way back when since I think I found your blog searching for info about Constellation Software.
2) Favorite posts: I like the one that compares MC and V to a Mercedes. I also enjoyed the life reflections here: http://dontfuckwithdonville.blogspot.com/2019/05/your-limited-options.html
Thanks! Yes, "Your limited options" was a good post. I like to share my despair.
SupprimerCongratulation, i have a learned a lot with you.The post with the penetrator camera name during class session was a very good one.
RépondreSupprimerBetter for the reader than for the author!
SupprimerCongratulations and thank you, I have enjoyed reading your posts. I wish there were more people writing about investing with a sense of humour. And swearing.
RépondreSupprimerI like lots of posts, but one that stood out was the one where I found out where your name came from (and the cover, my god...)
Congrats perpetrator, enjoy reading your posts .
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