One aspect of this board that Saul was big on, was the non zero-sum or positive sum nature of this style of growth investing. I remember when I first got to the board and reading that Saul said writing a monthly summary would make you a better investor. I was skeptical of writing a portfolio summary because I did not see the point, or how it would make me a better investor.
At the time of arriving on the board, I also did not track my results closely. I knew I wanted my balance to go up with the appropriate amount of risk vs reward. Saul also wrote that tracking results closely will improve the skill of an investor. Again I was skeptical here what additional edge it would provide, as the results are historical. I thought my focus should be just on being solely in the right underlying names, and opposed to how I performed in the past.
However, over time I began doing a monthly summary and tracking my results monthly. I did indeed find that both of these activities made me a better investor. It was not really in the way I expected though, as defining my investing process more, made me have a more disciplined approach. I also started getting more consistent results as I began defining my investing process further.
I realize over the years there were people dropping by the board with a cynical attitude. The assumption was nobody would ever give away anything for free, so the board must exist to pump Saul’s stocks. The interesting thing here is, there is actually no value in “pumping” a stock. Over the longer run, the underlying business needs to deliver results themselves for the stock to do well. Getting people excited about a stock that then produces a poor report, does nobody any good. This is why it is better to focus on what can be controlled, by selecting strong names consistently where the business has a good chance to over perform.
I have found a lot of value in writing up individual stocks for the board to see what the feedback is on the stock. There’s been plenty of times where I thought a stock was a great name, and the feedback was tepid. Other times I was on the fence about writing up a name, to find out the stock did interest other investors a lot.
I think participation on the board was basically essential to Saul’s strategy. Recently there are a lot of posters speaking up now, who were not active participants on the board. I think just being purely a consumer of the board, is missing the point of the board. Saul was clear this style of investing is non zero-sum, and I found this to be the case, after I started contributing more.
I would prefer if posters were actively more posting, even if they are casual takes on the stocks or topics. For example, I kicked off a thread on Viavi Solutions and there are no replies yet. The board in this case is not getting the value it should be, because so many are content with not contributing. Especially for the folks that really want to see this board thriving, then participation would be helpful.