Your portfolio will naturally concentrate itself, the way it should be, into your winners if you just stay out of the way.

Poor Investors often disguise inexperience with arrogance. Rich investors disguise experience with humility. The richest person in the room is usually the quietest one in the room. The poorest person in the room is usually the loudest one in the room.

I became financially independent in 2008 at age 27. Or as my Father likes to say, I retired. Yeah right. It’s more like you exchange security for total insecurity.

I get asked a lot about how much capital you need to become a full-time investor. That answer will be different for everyone. It’s a personal decision. I was single with no kids living in Lancaster, PA. It was a great time to make that decision.

I would say a much better question is how much pain can you endure.

Can you sustain a 30-40-50% drawdown while also drawing it down to pay bills?

How would this affect you emotionally, psychologically?

Would two or three bad years in a row cripple you?

At what point would your investment strategy start to crumble by these emotions?

At what point does my advantage of “focus on the long-term” shift to “this next quarter needs to be good” or else..

Am I mentally prepared to perhaps go to my wife and tell her I failed and can’t support us anymore? That I need to get a job, that she needs to get a job.

We are all fighting the same battles: Riding a winner deciding if you should hold it. Holding a loser deciding if you should sell it. Sticking with a stock that has gone nowhere for quarters/years questioning your thesis. You aren’t alone. We are all fighting the same battles.

One of my favorite

Forbes estimates that Beanie Baby creator Ty Warner’ net worth is $2.7 Billion. This is an amazing achievement considering a bulk of it was earned during a 3-year time frame selling a $5 per unit stuffed animal.

The fact that Ty Warner’s Beanie Babies were able, without the benefit of a single ad, to outpace the combined annual profits of the largest toymakers in the world for even a few years is unprecedented.

To illustrate how quickly the bubble grew - In 1995, Ty Warner’s company Ty Inc had sales of roughly $28 million. In 1996 sales were $280 million with $90 million in pre-tax income. By 1998, Ty Inc sales reached $1.34 billion with pre-tax income of $700 million.

In Ebay’s 1998 Annual Report it disclosed Beanie Babies as material. “At times, approximately 7% of our listings involved Beanie Babies”. Furthermore, it was said that 10% of Ebay sales at the time were derived from Beanie Babies.

Successful investing is hard work because it means disciplining your mind to do the opposite of human nature. Buying during a panic, selling during euphoria, and holding on when you are bored and crave action.

A director whose moderate income is heavily dependent on directors' fee and who hopes mightily to be involved to join other boards in order to earn more fees is highly unlikely to offend a CEO or fellow directors, is not an independent director.

Investing tid bits.

During high

OPTIMISM: Buyers are willing to pay high prices. You should be a PESSIMIST

PESSIMISM: Buyers are unwilling to pay even low prices. You should be an OPTIIMIST

@Tom_Voltz1 1/

That’s a possibility.

Buffett has this concept of “owner earnings”: how much cash can be safely taken out of a business each year without hurting it?

Take out more than this, and we risk hurting the business’s competitive position, earning power, unit volume, etc.

2/

At the same time, leaving capital in a terrible business is not a great idea either. It’s like throwing good money after bad.

In fact, directing capital away from textiles (a bad business) and into insurance (a better business) is one reason for Berkshire’s success.

/End

Key Learnings from one of the best Investing Letters that I have read this year from @rohitchauhan

Time for a thread with SOIC Key Takeaways 🧵🧵🧵🧵

First Key Learning:

The first is the importance of getting the trend and its timing right. No business does well in isolation, it is a part of a much bigger trend. For eg:In sectors like API/CDMO/Chemicals, many businesses have created wealth. As they are going through tailwinds

Thus,It becomes important to identify long-term trends like manufacturing, Financialization of saving, or Formalization of sector (think PVC/CPVC Pipes) and to be patient. Long-term trends keep offering opportunities. Just think about it- if its truly long term, then the

Opportunity will exist for a long period of time no?

Second Key Learning:

Look at Valuation in a broader context and not in isolation. When a sector catches fancy of the markets, and earnings growth is strong in the entire sector. Most of the time, markets start discounting

the earnings and reward the business with a high multiple. As long as the trend holds and management is executing, one should hold the stock and be tolerant of higher valuations 💯💯💯

Prediction is an addition in financial world many suffer from

Sorry, addiction