A very important post!

To reiterate what imyoung wrote:

Look how many posts we had to delete as way off topic. Look at the holes in the list of post numbers. These are all gone. You are making a lot of work for us to do to keep the board valuable to us by posting off-topic and junk posts.

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And a beginner wrote in and asked how he can best follow what I do, and several of you actually tried to tell him what to do to copy me or others! Are you out of your minds!!!

Well, he’d be totally foolish to follow what I or someone else is doing. And you are insane to try to encourage him, and tell him how to do it. Do you really want to take on responsibility for him on yourself?

Today is just two trading days after I posted my end of the month report and I’ve already made changes. I make them all the time. And I usually don’t announce them until the end of the month. And Chris, and Bear, and Stocknovice and most of the others do the same. Your beginner has to learn how to evaluate stocks for himself. Following people without making his own decisions will just leave him lost.

What if something happens during the month and most of us sell out of a company? He wouldn’t even know about it. This board is to teach you how to fish for yourself!!! It is not to tell you what stocks to buy. You have to decide that. We aren’t stock advisors. We know nothing about your personal finances, your income, your expenses, your family size, your responsibilities, etc. What we do might be totally wrong for him or you. We try to teach how to evaluate stocks for yourself, but the decisions are up to you.

I make lots of mistakes, lots of them! Following me without being aware of my corrections could be financial suicide. Don’t do it!

Saul

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Thanks for posting this PSA Saul. I am also concerned about this.

I saw people replying to my post suggesting they were looking at a stock based on my recommendation. I am happy to introduce people to investment ideas, but it’s important to remind readers that they need to make their own decisions, based on their own research.

I change my mind all the time. Sometimes it’s not based on new information. I just change my mind about investment and sell. Readers of this board need to be aware of this.

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I still have some person (I think the term jerk or something is probably appropriate) from around 2005 or 2010 or whenever that was) who blames me for his loss of money in XONE. When I ended up making more than a double in XONE, selling at the near literal top, and moving on.

I then, after selling XONE, turned negative on the shares for the very reasons why I ended up selling XONE after being positive on it since its IPO. To the point that I was then accused of being a short and manipulating shares.

Did not matter that I was right both times. I got it coming and I got it going…and I did it all in real time, and it still did not matter.

So don’t anyone dare blame Saul if you end up losing money. Saul gets nothing for posting his portfolio and wisdom other than the benefits we all get of crowdsourcing and comradery. And both here and on my own forum, that has been worth far more than any subscription fees one may theoretically be able to make.

On a different topic, dang! Zoom Info blew the cover off the ball and is showing accelerating revenues and nearly unprecedented margins (see Microsoft or that autonomous driving company that Intel bought a few years back) for any company that I’ve ever seen with margins like these, and still, boom! The market sucked all the fun out of Zoom at the end of the day today despite a wonderful beginning. That is what the market does, and for those who’ve learned from Saul, you have also figured out not to let it bother you.

Tinker

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I understand that you are looking for companies that are improving their metrics. the question I have is what source you use to pull this data.

I suggest you read the posts in the side panel
How I Pick a Company to Invest In
Why it really is different this time
Why my investing criteria have changed

My primary source is discussion on the board. Also the companies’ earnings reports, websites, and press releases. I also suggest you subscribe to MF Rule Breakers and MF Stock Advisor.

The other question is how do u determine allocation ratios for each stock. do you use risk analyzer ratios like sortino ratio?

God,no! No mechanical ratios. It’s a function of how much confidence I have in the company.

can you also share what are you doing with zi stock. the stock blew estimates and gapped up but it was sold off. since guidance was great, is this an opportunity to add?

You haven’t followed the discussion on the board. You have to pay attention. It was very clear what happened. There was a secondary by venture capitalists who invested in the company from the beginning.

I spoon fed you this time, but we won’t do it again. You have to follow the discussion.

Saul

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And I forgot to mention following sources for stock information:

Bert Hochfeld’s Ticker Target
Muji’s Hhhypergrowth newsletter
Gaucho Rico’s newsletter
And End of Month Discussions, as well as ongoing discussions, by many on the board gives us lots of cloud sourced information.

Saul

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I’m sure that most of us who follow this board also receive posts from Seeking Alpha for stocks that we are interested in. For folks who don’t have much experience with SA let me interject that you really need to be careful about SA as a source of investment information. There are no qualification requirements to be an SA author so far as I know. The quality of analysis varies greatly.

I’m not saying that every SA article is without merit. Some of the articles are actually quite good. One of the board favorites, recommended numerous times by Saul, Bert Hochfeld often posts a free article on SA. I’m just suggesting that you tread with caution with respect to SA articles.

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