I am new on the Board, but want to thank Saul for the postings. They taught me a lot in stock investing.
Thanks again, Saul.
Saul
I just discovered your board. I am a teacher who is trying to learn enough and save enough to retire with more than just enough to exist. It has been wonderful to read your posts. Please continue to do what you do. I really appreciate learning from you.
Many thanks, Amy
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Hi, Saul -
Glad you had a profitable quarter. May there be many more!
Here’s something that caught my eye. I find it strange that you would post that, given that you’ve reported that you’ve sold shares only to buy them back later (heck, I do that all the time!):
But if you or I sold out at the end of April, because we thought the market was overpriced, we never would have bought back, because the market kept going up and never gave us that correction to buy back in, and we would have thus missed all the rest of this enormous rise after April.And that’s the problem with trying to time the market!!!
Seriously, Dude!?! This is just the obverse side “price-anchoring” (e.g., I can’t sell because that’ll be a loss!). Your example: “Oh no, I can’t buy because I once sold at a lower price!!!”
Let’s get real. Investors can (and sometimes should) change their minds in a blink of an eye. You, yourself, have changed your mind about specific investments a number of times. If someone sells to gather together a bit o’ dry powder in anticipation of a market downturn, then that investor can choose to deploy those funds whenever. That’s hardly a negative in my world.
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Let’s get real. Investors can (and sometimes should) change their minds in a blink of an eye. You, yourself, have changed your mind about specific investments a number of times. If someone sells to gather together a bit o’ dry powder in anticipation of a market downturn, then that investor can choose to deploy those funds whenever. That’s hardly a negative in my world.
I think Saul changed idea on stocks not market. Even in 2000, he sold high flying stocks because they went up $30-$50 a day for several days. But he re-invested the money in other kind of stocks. So he basically still kept about 100% in stocks. Timing the market indeed is a loser’s game.
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FDN was also mentioned as a comparison index. It’s only up by about 8.5% YTD.
“Did you ever hear of an economist who got rich investing in the stock market?”
John Maynard Keynes did quite well once he got the knack, mainly from buying companies in which he had a lot of confidence.
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Saul, I too would like to thank you for your mentoring of me through these boards. I discovered you back in 2013 when you would post on the Tesla boards during its ascension.
I would of never had the confidence to invest in companies like Tesla if it weren’t for you. I was able to catch some of its move and then pivot away and put seed down in companies like Square, Shop, and Arista companies with good fundamentals and that I understand.
Netflix is still the stock that has made me the most money and am just curious if you were ever invested in it in the early days?
Thanks for all you do!!
Gerald
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Netflix is still the stock that has made me the most money and am just curious if you were ever invested in it in the early days?
Hi Gerald, I can’t really remember but I think that maybe I did. If so I probably got out when they messed up so badly that the stock fell about 85% or so. I would have gotten out in the first couple of days, because it was clear why they were falling, and it wasn’t a situation of let’s add at this bargain price. NFLX turned out to be the one in a hundred that came back from a company destroying mistake like that. A lot of people say “Hold forever. Look at NFLX, it came back!” I say “Look at the other 99 companies that didn’t come back!” (For some familiar names, AOL, Yahoo, Westport, Solar City, etc).
Best,
Saul
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Putnid,
I think your post below misses the context of what Saul was getting at. I believe he meant “sold” as in sold out of the market all together. Saul has admittedly changed his mind on individual stocks, but almost every time it was because he thought there was a better place (stock) to put that money.
Selling but staying invested is much difference than selling to move to cash and wait for some type of sell-off.
"But if you or I sold out at the end of April, because we thought the market was overpriced, we never would have bought back, because the market kept going up and never gave us that correction to buy back in, and we would have thus missed all the rest of this enormous rise after April.And that’s the problem with trying to time the market!!!
Seriously, Dude!?! This is just the obverse side “price-anchoring” (e.g., I can’t sell because that’ll be a loss!). Your example: “Oh no, I can’t buy because I once sold at a lower price!!!”
Let’s get real. Investors can (and sometimes should) change their minds in a blink of an eye. You, yourself, have changed your mind about specific investments a number of times. If someone sells to gather together a bit o’ dry powder in anticipation of a market downturn, then that investor can choose to deploy those funds whenever. That’s hardly a negative in my world."
- Austin
Shopify (SHOP) Ticker Guide
For information on all of my current holdings view my profile here: http://my.fool.com/profile/CMFAleeb/info.aspx
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Dear Saul,
Adding up your position sizes it comes to 95.4%. Can you tell what the remaining 4.6% is, cash maybe?
Thank you
Mk76
Adding up your position sizes it comes to 95.4%. Can you tell what the remaining 4.6% is, cash maybe?
Yep
Thanks for all that you do Saul.
I’m still up 24% for the year.
I look forward to the monthly summaries eagerly.
Saul:
Let me also chime in and say you have made a major difference in my life, and now my children. I just retired, and am confident my wife and I will have the type of retirement we dreamed of. We are leaving next week for 3 weeks in Spain, 5 weeks on safari in Africa and 2 weeks in England.
I have talked to my children about you, and several of my friends. My children are now “Saulites”, which I believe will help their and my grand children’s lives (when I get them).
You are NOT bragging. You are charging forward, confident in your research and one of the most open, transparent and sharing person I know.
My children are in their 20s, and they are reading and learning from the best.
What is even better, is we all are getting paid to learn.
Keep up the good work, and if the naysayers don’t like it … TOUGH. It’s their problem, certainly not yours.
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Saul,
I guess I’m a bit late to the party. I’ve been on a little vacation and sort of fell behind on some of my reading.
So, as post #34 (unless someone gets in front of me) I want to encourage you to continue your comprehensive monthly portfolio reviews. As you know, I was one of your earlier followers on this board. I’ve found your reviews (in fact most all your posts) to be invaluable. I have learned a lot from you in particular and also from many of the very intelligent followers of this board. I am continually amazed at the depth of knowledge, experience and highly intelligent members of this community. I would go so far as to say being a member here has been life changing in a positive way, and in no small measure it is because of you personally.
I retired in 2010 with social security and a pretty good pension. My wife also has a pension from her employment in China. In other words, I have an income. But, I have been all too aware that my income is mostly static while inflation is not. Since the 2008 meltdown, inflation has been low in historical terms, but that won’t last. I had a modest inheritance when my mother died. I had dabbled with investing for many years, but never really took it very seriously, always thinking it impossible to beat the professionals who make a living at it. I didn’t keep records, but my guess is I probably lost more money than I made over the years. In other words, I met my expectations.
In 2010 after I retired and I had an inheritance, I decided to hire a professional to manage my portfolio. I chose Edward Jones because I had some friends in the office where I had previously worked who seemed to think they provided a valuable service for their fees. That was a fiasco. That’s what brought me back to TMF which I had kind of followed in the 90s. That’s what brought me here. I remember having read one of your posts on some TMF board (I don’t recall which) before you started this board. I was impressed. It changed my mind about managing my own portfolio rather than following someone else’s advice, but I really didn’t know what or how to do it.
I pretty much got interested with your approach to stock picking in 2015, but didn’t fully embrace it. I lost money that year. I started to become a convert in 2016 and transitioned my investments to a smaller, self managed portfolio during the year. I also lost money in 2016. But, by the beginning of 2017 I had fully transitioned my portfolio to a much smaller number of rapidly growing companies. And I was paying attention to not just the numbers, but the management, the business models, the products/services, the moats and other fundamentals related to my investments. I was up about 83% last year.
This year, like you I started off being up what seemed to be an absurd amount. I kept cautioning my wife not to extrapolate. This is not normal - maybe it is for someone who tolerates high risk, is glued to their investments 24x7 or something like that, but that does not describe me. I pay attention pretty much on a daily basis, but I don’t trade in and out of my holdings with every hiccup. Stock price in of itself does not guide my decisions. If the fundamentals hold steady, I pretty much ignore the daily gyrations of the market. Most of my trading takes place when a position grows uncomfortably large or I really want to acquire a new position and need cash to do so.
I don’t post my own monthly reviews because there’s a high degree of over lap between my portfolio and other members of this board who do a much better job of reporting than I am able to. In fact, those reports are my primary source of finding new investments. The differences between my portfolio and others reported by board members are largely in the percentages and a few very small very speculative holdings that I have which I have reported here, but with little elaboration as I feel they aren’t really germane to the subject of this board. Most of my posts have been more general in nature (like this one), or related to my my rapidly going out of date 30 years experience in IT at a very large aerospace firm.
I’m writing this on Easter Sunday evening. Today, the Chinese announced retaliatory tariffs related to US metals tariffs imposed by Trump. I expect the market to take a dive tomorrow morning. I will probably do nothing in response. I don’t think any of this will deeply impact any of the companies that I am invested in, but a trade war won’t benefit them either. There may be some collateral damage. But, I have to ask myself, what will I do with the cash if a sell off a large percentage of my portfolio. Sit on it and wait for the bottom? How will I know when it has arrived? Do I really want to pay all those taxes in the meantime? Well, I’ve drifted a bit, but I would say being able to maintain a measure of equanimity in the face of a sell-off is yet another thing I’ve learned from you.
In any case, I only wish to echo what so many other have already written; I look forward to your monthly, in-depth portfolio reviews and I hope that you continue so long as you are able and have the time and inclination to do so.
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Dear Saul,
I found your board in December of 2017 so have only had pleasure of reading it a few months. I am learning to invest and so far, I haven’t found better place.
Thank you for what you have done, knowledge base, and completely understand if you discontinue your posts. But I am almost begging you to please continue. I can’t say that I am up in my portfolio as my “timing” for buying seem to be off. I am in red in most from original investments, not just profits (e.g. bought NTNX at $54, some SHOP at $146) but somehow reading your posts with summaries of the companies, I know I will be alright. I am HAPPY that you are making such great returns. I sincerely hope that you continue your monthlies so I can learn to allocate, re-allocate, learn about companies, etc. etc. I’ve mentioned before that working full time and having 7 year old twins, unfortunately doesn’t give me a whole lot of time to explore companies.
BTW, how do you initially find companies, if you don’t mind sharing? For example, SHOP. Was it from TMF recommendation (I joined their services in Dec as well). I have noticed that you refer to Bert a lot and started following him.
Enough of begging here. Thank you for everything! (I would have replied sooner but only now catching up since I like to read your reports in detail vs. skimming through it and I was away for spring break in Disneyland).
Best regards,
Natasha
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BTW, how do you initially find companies, if you don’t mind sharing? For example, SHOP. Was it from TMF recommendation (I joined their services in Dec as well). I have noticed that you refer to Bert a lot and started following him.
Hi Natasha, Welcome to the board.
As far as Shopify, as I remember the Fool recommended them two months in a row, which I had never seen before, and then Bert recommended them just afterwards, and the coincidence was too much for me. I researched them and bought.
I get new stocks from the Fool (recommend subs to at least Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers, which I subscribe to), also from Bert’s articles on Seeking Alpha (and I also subscribe to his Ticker Target newsletter), and I get a lot of idea’s from this board.
Saul
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Thank you for your kind welcome and answer to my question, Saul!
I did subscribe to Stock Advisor and a little later to Rule Breakers. I will definitely subscribe to Ticker Target newsletter as well.
Saul:
Do you post updates during the month on your trades or just provide a monthly update? I have spent the last three years trading some of my money (options, futures, etc.) or should i say losing my money and have decided to quit this foolishness. Fortunately, the bulk of my money has been invested using Motley Fool Pro, Rule Breakers and Supernova picks. Your boards provide a wealth of information and i’m just trying to understand if its possible to follow your buying and selling decisions in real time to help my thinking. I have significant capital to redeploy over 30% of my portfolio and not sure what the best approach is. Your returns are quite impressive and the amount of time you have spent creating all this great free content is wonderful!
Thanks,
John
Saul: Do you post updates during the month on your trades or just provide a monthly update? I have spent the last three years trading some of my money (options, futures, etc.) or should i say losing my money and have decided to quit this foolishness. Fortunately, the bulk of my money has been invested using Motley Fool Pro, Rule Breakers and Supernova picks. Your boards provide a wealth of information and i’m just trying to understand if its possible to follow your buying and selling decisions in real time to help my thinking. I have significant capital to redeploy over 30% of my portfolio and not sure what the best approach is. Your returns are quite impressive and the amount of time you have spent creating all this great free content is wonderful!
Hi John, if you have been reading the board at all, you’d know that I only very rarely post my trades before the end of the month, and sometimes don’t post all of them even then. “I started a small position in a new company but don’t feel ready to talk about it yet.”
Following someone’s trades is not at all what this board is about. Neither are options and futures welcome. We are here to help each other discover and analyze relatively long term positions in exceptional companies. In other words, this board is for long term growth stocks. If you want to learn more about the board I suggest you read the Knowledgebase in three parts on the right hand panel on each post on the board, and then decide if this board is really for you. This board is DEFINITELY not for trading. I hope this helps. If it turns out that you’d like to stay after learning more about the board, we’d be glad to have you.
Saul
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Saul:
I am in the process of changing my strategy to a long-term buy and hold stock approach from an active trading strategy which used various options and futures strategies unsuccessfully. I have just started to read your board and will spend some time going through the boards before posting again.
Thanks,
John
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