I have been an active member in this forum for 8+ years and in that time, I have grown from strength to strength and I could thank numerous people for the same. I have written a lot but have never done so in a thread of my own. I have mostly written in the books thread and the bull therapy techno funda thread and numerous company threads. I stop myself from sharing a lot of random thoughts, ideas and opinions because they don’t fit in any of these threads. The idea for this thread is to do the same, without boundaries. I will do so very infrequently and not unless its worth writing about. I don’t know what shape it will take but the idea is to write about things beyond investing and about value in general, which can arise in a lot of other contexts.
To start with though, I would like to write a bit about the year that has passed. It has been an incredible year from an investing standpoint. I forced myself to try my hand at an approach (holding long-term) which I felt was very different from the one I was using last year. The year before ('22) was buying mid/large cap consumption names (VBL, ITC, IDFC First, Metro Brands etc.) where again I switched consciously to smaller names for '23. This year I tried my hand at a low churn approach with expectation of 20% returns. I am stumped and confused by how well it has worked out. Ceinsys, Wockhardt and Shaily have really done well (continue to hold) alongside Shilchar, Garware, Sharda Motors (sold these 3 only to regret the former 2). There were numerous others but compared to these, they didn’t move the needle much because of smaller allocations or because they performed relatively poorly.
As for good things from '23 which i carried forward - I continued to collaborate with numerous people, focused on position-sizing. But dropped the technicals in techno-funda and macro bits mostly (I still look at charts and follow macro for amusement but dont act). The last bit in last year’s post on long-term investing clearly played in my mind a lot and helped change my approach. Bulk of the alpha this year came from sitting through “Day 1 of the bear market” (election results, june 4th) and with ceinsys through MH results. This calmness and courage could have backfired but thankfully it did not. This is what I hope to carry through '25 with not much expectations and take whatever comes with equanimity - Wocky’s 5222 NDA, Shaily’s RoW launches in Semaglutide this year, Ceinsys execution of their 1200 Cr order book (+ 500 Cr L1) are what I am looking forward to.
Have also focused more on picking up additional skills (playing guitar) and health (running) alongside reading which I continue to do. It was a very good year in terms of number of books read but a very poor one in terms of summarazing/reviewing as I now have a pile of nearly 40 books which are read but not reviewed. This is something I hope to change.
Hopefully I will have things to share in this thread through '25 on everything under the sun. Happy new year!
) of the fundamentals of the companies that he holds but the gyrations in the market is tempting to sell at whatever minor profit or loss that he gets and return when the overall market conditions turn out better? Your general views would be highly appreciated.
