I have been a subscriber to this site since 9th December 2011. What I observed in recent times IS that ValuePickr has benefited me immensely. Involuntarily I was investing my funds in shares discussed by the Master Pickers over here. And now after more than a year I the gains made by me have far exceeded my returns ever since i started investing in shares.
Today my portfolio mirrors the holdings of ValuePickr, Hitesh, Ayush, Hemant Gupta, Dhwanil and the likes. So what have I ended up doing is just CLONING.
Recently i came across A video of Mohnish Pabrai ( of Dhandho Investors fame) addressing students of University of California, Davis and he was speaking on CLONING.
He said that when he read Tom Peters ( at the age of 24) he never believed what he was saying. Tom Peters was saying that if you are running a business, try sitting with your competitors and lay out your competitive advantages to them and how you are making money etc. They will listen to you but when they leave there will be no change in They will run their business the way they have been running.
To prove Tom Peters wrong Mohnish decided that he would do 2 things:
If he sees anyone one ( competitor or from any other industry) doing something smart, he would adopt it.
Share his competitive advantages with his competitors and observe if there is any change in
After 25 years he proved Tom Peters wrong by cloning Warren Buffett partnership rules but also noticed that competitors listen to you but never implement your competitive advantages.
There are very few who clone which forms just 1% while 99% reject it.
A few examples given by Mohnish were of Walmart and Microsoft.
Walmart did not have many innovations in the first 15 years of their existence. Many trade practices were lifted from Sears and KMart. Sam Walton was a cloner and spent most of his time in competitors stores.
Microsoft is also one of the biggest and successful cloner. Every product was cloned. Windows was lifted from Mac. Word from Word Perfect. Excel from Lotus. Bing from Google.
How many guys here are willing to take up the challenge of CLONING?? or wish to be in the 99% who are left behind.
I am sure that we can have one of the best PORTFOLIOS ever. Let us all share our expertise and make a list of 10-20 SHARES which can benefit all of us.
Best Stock Pickers at ValuePickr, request you to put your heads together and make a list soon, so that others can CLONE.
Cloner Tony
