The March 2020 Portfolio

Q&A: Questions & Answers Portfolio Q&A
1

Hello Everyone,

I started my investment journey in March of 2020, as i write this post, I have spent slightly more than one and a half year in the market, so basically just the best one and a half year the market has seen in a decade. At that time, when everything was down and out it was a very easy decision for me, standing outside to enter in this ring. Now that I have entered I plan to stay as long as possible.

Through this thread I just want to maintain a log of my initial struggles as an investor, something which I can look back on, in 10-20 years or so. The post is basically directed towards my future self reading this in March 2030 or March 2040 (sounds cliche I know).

At this point I don’t know if this thread will be of any value addition to anyone, but I will at least try to keep it fun.

This is the first post on this thread and I will keep it just about the overall process I have built in the last one year, I will add more details about the portfolio in the next post.

My Process :

Anytime I mention “you” in this post, its actually just me talking to myself and not referring to the reader.

  1. Don’t look at companies too closely. At the end of the day, all they have do for you is earn profits, honestly share the profits, and increase the profits earned with time.
    When you have just started investing keep an open mind and keep things simple. Spending too much time on a company might make you like it beyond merit.

  2. Buying good companies is not enough to beat the market if your time range is short.

    1. Good Company Good Price, You get multi bagger returns.
    2. Good Company Fair Price, You beat market returns.
    3. Good Company Premium Price, You get market returns.
    4. Good Company Over Priced, Market beats you.

  3. Market is nearly perfect so the only way to beat the market is to buy in the short duration when its imperfect on the down side and sell when its imperfect on the upside. You don’t need any edge to beat the market, you just have to exploit the extremes.

  4. Market factors in quantifiable information almost perfectly, your edge if any can only be in non quantifiable information. Do not try to beat the market on quantifiable information, it will be painful.

  5. Always have a mechanism to compare your portfolio returns with an index, If you are not beating the index then what are you even doing. Index return is a mirror into which you should look as and when possible (but not too frequently).

  6. Don’t force a concentrated portfolio just because buffet said so, concentration will come with knowledge and conviction.

  7. 30 percent on 100 rupee is less than 5 percent on 1000. Investing in yourself and increasing what you can invest is more important that a few percent change in portfolio returns.

  8. In someways there is a lot of beginners luck involved in stock market, don’t get fooled by it.

  9. Good management is nothing but good capital allocator.

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