I don’t have a finance or economics background. I’m an ordinary guy who’s been working for the last 20 odd years to build up some capital. Now I’d like to find out how to successfully invest it. I figured this skill would be more rewarding both intellectually and financially in the long term than try to climb the corporate ladder. To be successful in a career you need to pick the right industry, role etc. If you’re in a dying industry that’s not great, if you’re in a role that is going to be AI’d, that’s not great either. You have to adopt that’s for sure and that’s not a problem for me. However, as an investor you can pick and choose the industries and companies that have some tail-wind or industry that’s not going to be totally disrupted. You can learn about business and how the great businesses operate. Perhaps it could even help in the career outside of investing.
I read the Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham about 20 years ago. But it was quite vague for me then. It’s a great book but it doesn’t really provide any method of how to go about it. Also it felt quite risky as individual stocks can go up and down quite dramatically regardless if you’re right or wrong about them. It’s all fine not to worry about it if you’re Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger but if you have to work for money then any dip in your portfolio is a setback.
Here I want to describe what I’m doing to improve my chances of making money possibly quite slowly using what I’ve learned from great value investors of the past and present and from my own investing.
