We all come across articles everyday, that eloquently convinces us to buy something. The good and the bad are both laid out very simply, by a sound investment manager, who has been in business for decades. Most importantly, he helps you see why it’s contrarian, and why the market is discarding it.
Sometimes it pays to look back, on the catastrophic failed picks, that seemed super convincing. One such is this, talk by Rick Rule: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acgLx37SbwM
He outlines, several investments, in the best way that can appeal to a value investor. Turns out, ALL of the 8 picks were failures. Not just by a little bit, but a dollar became 30 cents on this contrarian basket.
Apart from the great commodity bust (and that all stocks are commodity stocks), I wonder what else we could learn here. What would I have seen at the time of the investment, (which btw, was already a commodities bear market, buying them at > 70% off.), had I done the work. It’s easy to just say, well don’t buy commodity stocks, but I want to learn a bit more than that.
When I encounter something like this, it usually convinces one to pause all investments, before you post-mortem the smart stock picker, who was just completely killed, and learn as much as you can. Obviously he was being a good salesman, but it was quite enticing…
This requires some deep work, and it’s in my TODO list, but thought of sharing it more widely.