The Long Term Investor

I allways loved books, all my life. Since I was small kid I did devour huge amounts of books. Classic authours, art, geography, history, mythology, political thinking etc you name it. Due some health issues my mum use to "ship me" during summer to countryside where her parents lived back then. Those periods sort of work out as an aditional driver to my reading habbits. Local libraries, family librairies, friends librairies all available to satisfy my "thirst".

Some years later (much later), around 2005 if I remember right, I was in a bookshop here, a big french retailer (https://www.fnac.com/) looking for books during, a typical hobby at weekends. By accident a big compendium fell on my foot from one shelf an employee was tidying up. The book was a manual about stock markets, one of few written books my portuguese authors, a lawyer enthusiast about markets. Of course I read the book that weekend, it was a new window of knowledge for me.

During that period I was also searching for a plan B for my life. I allways worked during my adult life as an engineer but at that time (after 2005/2006) local economy was not ok here and in the following years would deep in a much worst state. In 2012 country finantials collapsed and Portugal had to request for the third time in his history a bailout to international entities. A joint between IMF, EU and ECB borrowed back then 78.000 M€ to rescue country. In return we had to implement some harsh measures to correct trajectory deficit.

As you may imagine work turned "a scarce commodity" for many of us...I had two young daughters at home, my wife was working as a consultant back then, also suffering some setbacks from market conditions and I understood that a crisis like this could shake down our "way of living".

So that moment with the book that fell from a shelf, the reading of it, was the click, the turning point that I should start my plan B not the week or month after but right away. So I did it. I started with what I did best....educating myself. I read on a first stage mainly the big autheurs in tech analysis (John Murphy Technical Analysis, Steve Nison Candlesticks, Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas, etc).That and saving money.

With excepcion of my initial years, maybe 3 or 4 initial years, I did well. Even when I used exclusivly tech analysis on my operations. For a couple of years I tried to trade futures, it was the period I joined Stockaholics (back then Hot Stock Market) in 2012, but was a fruitless experience. I quit with faible results. With my results, my savings, that copounding effect enabled me to work in different ways or lines at same time. I have different accounts with different purposes. One, p.e. is just for bonds, high yield bonds. Other is for local stocks, portuguese companies. Other is still for some trading operation that I still do now and then. However the big chunk is for "ethernal companies". I adviced both my girls to stay nimble and choose the easy path. I advice them to follow those simple rulls that make sense, like those "commandments" you use here, picking best in sector companies, iconic etc.

Post a bit long but honest with a bit of my personnel story.

 

It will be interesting to follow along in the upcoming future for sure.

Of course, with any company, when there is a change at the top or even in management it is really never the same. There are so many personal decisions to be made. While the goal may be to fundamentally run a company with those same values and roadmap, it is often difficult when you factor in the individual decisions and biases one way or another.

The past is not always a harbinger of what the future holds. A different time or era, new challenges, some uncontrollable events, and innovation. Will definitely be interesting to see how it unfolds.

 

This kind of brings back a topic we all discussed a few months ago regarding this site. Obviously, nothing has changed.

I noticed this morning at one point there were about 800 or so "guests" viewing the site as a whole. I don't know if that is accurate. It appears there are about 12,000 or so members. I suspect a significant majority of those are no longer even active. They simply can't be, based on low participation and posts. Maybe the numbers are distorted due to bots, random folks passing through, or something in between. They just don't seem to add up in relation to activity.

Even lurkers who can only view may enjoy some of the content, but if they are not able to pose questions or participate, they are simply going to move on. My guess is they likely went on to join some other place. Especially those that might actually be interested.

This (long term) thread is about the only semi-active thing left. We are simply going to be a victim of attrition at some point.

For example, I have membership to one other site. There are always new/young investors coming along and asking some type of questions or participating in some way. Even many of the posters who have been around a long time post a wide range of investing topics, which spurs even more participation and new members. It is very active from a membership and new membership perspective. I only provide that info as a comparison to demonstrate the stark difference.

I do enjoy our little thread here, but we are dwindling in a way that is likely not sustainable. Even some of our "regulars" from when I joined are no longer active. Now, some of that may be to busy life and such, but I suspect some of it is due to lack of participation and membership.

Anyway, the post about "lurkers" made me think of our issue here once again.

 

I'm trying to write my story for a couple of days now but my kids just won't let me do it.
During lockdown in 2020, I read the "Rich Dad Poor Dad" book, and it sparked an interest in the stock market. Before that I didn't have a clue about stocks. After that, I started reading about technical analysis and spent a lot of time learning about it. I accidentally found the Stockaholics in May 2021, and have been reading this thread almost daily.
In 2022, I found another very good forum about futures trading, Futures.io (now it's called Nexus.fi if I'm right). I became an elite member and after a long research simply realized that I don't have a chance in making money by trading.
So, I started investing in 2023. 2024 was a very good year for me, mostly thanks to NVDA. This year I'm doing pretty good as well, +25% YTD. This time PLTR is also in the game. In April I was "-32%," but I endured it since I can take that risk. I have no debt, no mortgage, not investing "scared" money.
I lived in Scotland for a couple of years, and now back home in Croatia. I had a great time in UK, met some great people. Nothing can beat old British humour. But I left the UK for a number of reasons, bad weather was one of the main ones.