1/ My most popular tweets of 2020 by month (thread)

January:

A reminder of @morganhousel cash strategy.

For every $1,000 in cash:

More: ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

Panic selling once can destroy years of good investment decisions in an instant

but keeping your head on straight when your portfolio is tanking is hard

Here are 13 investing tips/tricks/principles that I use to keep calm when my portfolio is in free fall:

1/ Know what you own and why you own it

You can borrow stock ideas from other investors, but you can’t borrow conviction

You must understand the bull AND bear case upfront, otherwise you won’t have the conviction to hold when the price is going down

Research builds conviction

Conviction enables patience

Patience builds wealth

If a 20% drop shakes your confidence in a business, you didn’t do enough research

2/ Know what drives long-term stock returns

In the short-term, emotions & computer algorithms determine stock prices

In the long-term, profit growth determine stock prices

This is a core investing principle that you must fully embrace

Look at these long-term charts of $MSFT, $HD, and $AAPL

Net income growth & stock price growth are closely linked in the long-term

That’s not a coincidence — profit growth IS WHAT DRIVES long-term value creation

What are the first metrics that you look at when evaluating a new stock?

I have an MBA in finance

But I’ve learned 10x more about investing from listening to podcasts than I did in school

Here are 24 podcasts that I regularly listen to that will make you a better investor⬇️

1/ Acquired -- @AcquiredFM

This podcast "tells the stories of great companies"

Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal do a great job of talking through acquisitions & have a stellar list of guests

2/ Animal Spirits

@awealthofcs & @michaelbatnick break down financial news, share insights that they are thinking about, and recommend TV shows & movies

3/ The Business Brew

@BillBrewsterSCG does long-form, in-depth, discussions about capital allocation and the psychology of investing/business

4/ Capital Allocators

@tseides has an amazing series of guests that discuss all facets of investing

His recent book -- Capital Allocators -- takes all of the top learners from his interviews and condenses them into a book

1/ How to review quarterly earnings 🧵

A step by step guide using $DXCM as an example

⬇️

2/ The BIG question: Is the thesis on track❓

Other question:

❓Is revenue growing?
❓Are margins stable/expanding?
❓Profits?
❓Balance sheet?
❓New opportunities?
❓New threats?

3/ I open 4 browser tabs

Tab 1 - Current company earnings report / shareholder letter

Tab 2 - Previous company earnings report / shareholder letter (check guidance)

Tab 3 - Analyst estimates

Tab 4 - Call Transcript

4/ Tabs 1 & 2 - Find the current & previous earnings report

I search "Dexcom Investor Relations"

I click on "press release"

Open the newest quarterly earnings report and last quarter

It can also be a shareholder letter/presentation

5/ Tab 3 - Find the quarterly analyst estimates

Open up $DXCM in yahoo finance

The "news" section usually has a link to reports on whether the company beat/met estimates

The "analysis" tab is a good source, but sometimes it updates to the next quarter too quickly

The British Railway Mania

How a disruptive technology created the biggest speculative bubble in the history of England

/THREAD/

1/ Railways were the most disruptive technology of the 19th century, known as the "railway age", transforming England from an agricultural to an industrialized nation.

2/ The development of railway infrastructure and locomotives started at the end of the 18th century but experienced immense growth after 1830.

3/ Hundreds of railway related bills were passed every year with proposed rails totaling 10,000 miles, a third of which was never built due to poor financial planning, competition, or fraud.

4/ In the mid-1840s, the Bank of England cut interest rates rendering government bonds unattractive, and investors more willing to rush in the railway investments.

@nivin27 Kenneth Andrade & all his interviews ever

Thread: Central Pivot Range (CPR)

CPR is another popular tool. Three lines are plotted on the chart when we plot CPR.

The three lines are: CPR, TC and BC.

Let’s understand the calculation.

You may recall that I explained the calculation of Pivot levels in an earlier thread. CPR stands for Central Pivot Range. It is always a center line of the three lines that gets plotted in the chart.

CPR is a Pivot price. Pivot is average of HLC as explained in the prev thread.

We also discussed about Mid-range of the session. Mid-range is average of High and low price of the session.

The mid-range of the bar is known as BC in the CPR calculation. BC stands for Bottom central pivot.

Pivot level captures the relationship of the closing price to the range of the session.

Pivot price above mid-price = bullish pivot
Pivot price below mid-price = bearish pivot

So, CPR line is Pivot and BC line is Mid-range.

What is the difference between both?
Mid-range is average of High and Low.

Pivot is average of High, Low and Close.
What will make the difference between the two?

Close.

Newbie traders after learning F&O, look for paper trading platforms to practise. It's like the itch to swim after you learn swimming but end up in a baby pool. Experience of an adult pool vs a baby pool is different, likewise with the real markets & paper trading 🧵 (1/11)

Agreed, without experience, loading your trading account to the tilt and trading can be disastrous 🌋, but that does not mean you will have to paper trade forever. No matter how much you paper trade, you will never get the experience of trading (2/11)

When I talk about trading, I’m not just talking about experiencing the P&L rush. IMHO, experiencing the P&L and how it can vary in real-time is the last thing. There are multiple other things that you need to get comfortable with before diving into full-fledged trading 🏊‍♂️(3/11)

Stuff like placing limit/market order, GTT, AMO. Practising how SL-L for long & short positions works, trailing stops, figuring how margins work, M2M, T+1, T+2 settlements - the list is endless😩 with several moving parts. No paper trading platform gives you the real deal (4/11)

Here is a hack, though - instead of paper trading, try and place an actual trade on a low-value futures contract. My favourite is USD INR 💱, it costs just under 2K per contract, but gives you the whole trading experience (5/11)