As the year winds down I find myself somewhat muddled on how, or even if, to use the new discussion format. In all honesty, I find it hard to find the board much less post on it. This of course could be entirely age related as I recently discovered a growing grumpiness for anything that changes. Take that jar of peanut butter I was looking for a few nights ago.
It was somewhere near 2AM or there abouts and I decided on peanut butter and crackers before going to bed. In all honesty, it was in fact another celebratory wine night which could have had some effect or other on my search. Anyway, the dang peanut butter was no where to be found. So - I improvised as most folks might do and had peanut butterless crackers. The next morning I remembered to bring it up at breakfast that we needed some peanut butter and was told we had plenty. It turns out that the dang cook - whom I love dearly and most especially for her blackened chicken fettuccine and also for her incredible rib stew -, had decided that the historical resting spot for peanut butter simply didn’t work after all these many years and had moved it to a less appropriate spot at the back of the pantry. Sigh.
Anyway, with only a few trading days left I the year I find myself sitting on a loss for the year of 27.6% and I don’t suppose the gravitational pull of woefulness will change all that much over the next week. Could, I suppose so I’ll probably update the final results. Not a pretty year though which brings me to my only remotely sage advice useful perhaps in some broad way as a preamble into my 2023 investing strategy.
#1 Romance Rarely goes Unpunished.
What this means is simply do not fall in love with any stock or company - they will not love you back. Stay on your toes out there and for God’s sake update your own investing plan and tweak it as needed.
#2. An old and probably unawake - but very appropriate, Blonde Joke:
An attractive Blonde stops a man on the street to ask him for the time. He checks his watch - ignoring his iPhone, and tells her 1:15 PM. The Blonde sighs and looks frustrated and the man asks her why. She replies: I’ve been asking people all day and I always get a different answer.
Now…if you are blonde, please do not report me to any Woke Adjudication Outfit (WAO) as it wouldn’t do any good anyway. But my point here is that investing can be made much more difficult if you are subscribed to a variety of investing services. This is especially true if you are one of those folks who does not have a lot of time to vet the various recommendations. All the investing services have their own methodology, strategy and preferential companies - meaning that they will all give you different answers to the age old question. of “Gee…wonder what I should invest in Now?”. See the similarities between investing gurus and blondes?
I subscribe and/or follow somewhere around 10-12 investing services. I attempt to collate the recommendations and find the consensus stuff - and then, put in an entirely grueling 15 minutes of intense, deep-dive research before adding anything to the portfolio. Not that I’ve added anything lately.
I have the same basic core of companies that I had a long long time ago and continue to fiddle with Trading Blocks - which have truly saved my rear end this year. Sort of. And truth be told I am loaded up currently with TBs on all core portfolio companies. I suppose I’ll see how that works out.
So, to sum up…my 2023 investing strategy and plan is to keep doing basically what I am basically doing now. Seems reasonable enough I suppose.
Anyway, I wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year.
In Vino Veritas!
All the Best,
)