I bought Fastly back in January @22 and sold some of it at 100 and the rest at 76.
The original reason to buy was that from what I had read on this board and in MF generally it seemed that fastly was the future with Akamai being the legacy. I had owned Akamai for ten or so years and had made some decent money on it. I also loved the video of Artur Bergman telling everyone that they were idiots if they had a certain type of flash drive.
Why did I sell ? I got scared that a stock which had gone up five times in eight months and nine times from the lows had gone too far too fast. Frankly, when the quarterly results were announced and the aforementioned Mr. Bergman had sold a ton of stock confirmed my bias.
I read with huge respect Muji, softwarestackinvesting and Tim Beyers. All three know more about these type of companies from a technical perspective than I ever will. I was thinking about re buying roughly the time Bert Hochfeld came out with his re buy on the stock. I hesitated. The stock started its recent rise from the mid 60’s to its present price. I was price anchoring think if if comes back to that mid 60’s level them I will buy. He who hesitates is lost.
The lessons are simple :
- stop price anchoring.
- get more comfortable with knowing what the company really does. This to me is perhaps the most important lessons since it stops, at least for me, the second guessing comes with not really understanding why I am making money. It feels like luck without this understanding and therefore I am liable to do what I did here and sell too quickly.
I am still making mistakes after 40 years of doing this and have made some howlers this year but am up 107% for the year which, if it holds, will be my best year (2009 was 99.4%).
My biggest holding is ADI which I have owned since 1986. Meli is No.2 which I have sold as it has gone up having originally bought it at 86. Shame I haven’t kept my original stake. Oh well.
Merry Christmas to all and thank you Saul for creating something truly special and for those who give their time and expertise in making this relatively old man a better investor.
Jonathan