Do you guys invest?

Well spotted @AJFinance!

Which is perfect cause that’s where you are @mattjuniper!

@reena One of the great benefits of a long-term philosophy is the psychological aspect. It’s much less stressful when you’re not worried about every up-tick or down-tick in the market.

Fortunately for me, I work for a Registered Investment Advisor who recommends managers to be put into our client’s portfolios. As is such, I have a lot of access to a lot of great managers which is how I found my mentor.

But I’ve also reached out to managers by simply cold calling (or cold emailing if you will). You’d be surprised at how willing they are to share their experience and insight if you come across as eager to learn and not simply looking for a job.

I’m terrible in the sense that I know I tend to hold on to loss making investment too long. I’m in fact 70% equity 30% commodity (crazy bullish I know), diversified across 15 investments.

Had the silly belief (since 2009) that the economy will recover fast, but the diversification helped balance out some obvious ‘silly’ investments at that time. e.g. short gold. L-)

Luckily overall return still positive! I like natural resources and commodities in particular, not so much fashion (god knows what affect their fundamentals).

It was really a quiz in disguise @AjFinance! I couldn’t remember the exact term for it, thanks for reminding!

Best investments: BARC at £0.50, sold at about £3.00, TTWO pre-acquisition talks, crude oil, HTC (sold before things went south).

Worst investments: Blockbuster (exited before it went bust, but still), CCJ before Fukushima, and HTC (bought again before things went south).

I practice a long-term, value-oriented strategy and have been taken under the wing, so to speak, by a value investor in Texas. So my portfolio sees very little turnover and is a bit concentrated (partly due to capital and partly due to philosophy). I’m currently invested in:

Microsoft (MSFT)
Expeditors Int’l (EXPD)
France Telecom (FTE)

Then I have 2 more that I started with before I become more cemented in my value philosophy. These were simply two companies who I was extremely familiar with and had a good understanding of their industries.

Musclepharm (MSLP)
Monster Beverage (MNST)

I’m not good at monitoring my investments, usually don’t have time for day trading. Mostly invest in funds like mutual funds and other bank deposits, well at least for the time being. @Sophie I believe you have a loss aversion bias 😉

@MattJuniper – too bad on Thomas Cook. But I agree with you on Man group, but it’s the craziest market there right now and we should put in the amount we’re happy to lose!

Still made 20% tho so I should be happy 🙂

Definitely some bargains out there, you just gotta have the guts to ride out the volatility!

@christine it helped that I was revising Behavioral Finance. Thanks to @Sophie though, she helped me apply it in a practical scenario 😛

@Sophie one of the biases I suffer from is Status quo bias.

Guts and cashflow 🙂

I had a client who invested £100k into RBS at 10p, and sold a month or so later at 30p. A vote of confidence seeing as I worked for RBS at the time!

I need to find the next RBS. @MattJuniper any suggestions? 😀

@reena exactly! the worst that can happen is they say they’re too busy or simply ignore you, which has happened to me in the past.

Yes I do, I get a massive buzz out of watching the market and (hopefully) making money. I tend to follow a contrarian strategy, and buy cheap stock when everyone else is selling. I was gutted, bought Thomas cook at about 18.7p in Nov-11, held on to it for a year and sold at 24.5p as it didn’t really seem to be going anywhere…1 month later it was in the fifties, and 2 months later it was up in the nineties! Couldn’t believe it!

I’m bullish on Man Group at the moment…current price of 94p represents one of the best available yields on the FTSE at the moment, having paid a c.6p half year divi, and just announced a further divi of c.8p, brining full year divi to c.14p, about a 15% yield. Obviously the risk is that the dividend ceases or that there is a significant decrease in AUM.

Other than that I’m playing the AIM at the moment with some O&G stocks, specifically FRR and GKP. The former would seem to have unbelievable potential, however the company do not provide regular updates so a lot of it is speculation at the mo.

Caveats: do your own research. I own the stocks mentioned above, and will likely add to my holdings in the next week.

@TachMan unfortunately they don’t teach you that until level 3 😉

It’s book 5…I’m only on book 3 🙂

Funny you say that @MattJuniper. In the height of the crisis, c. 2008, I remember going in for RBS and Barclays. Heart stopped the next 3 months until I exited, thankfully at a little profit. But risk adjusted return is prolly not worth it!

It’s book 5…I’m only on book 3 🙂

That’s ok, we’ll wait the extra two months 🙂

@Reena, even in job search, having an uber thick skin helps! I remember getting so tired of rejection after rejection for an internship program ages ago – that I just got immune to the process and be myself – and eventually got one! So it’s a mixture of practice and not giving up too early….