Got myself into a mess with the Turkish KUYAS stock. Haven’t been able to sell it for weeks now. There’s just no liquidity in the market – that’s it, taban. It looked like a good stock, been going up for years, everything seemed to be okay. So I added it to the portfolio. It went up for me for a while too, then suddenly dropped like a rock. I’m down about 70% on the position now, and probably around 14% on the whole portfolio. ...
So someone gets into the stock market. Opens the brokerage app, and there they are… “ideas.” Subscribes to a Telegram channel – more “ideas.” Goes to read some research – yep, “ideas.” “Top 10 stocks to buy,” “5 high-yield bonds,” “30% upside,” “idea of the year.” Wow! Okay, fine. Buys one at 5% of the portfolio. The next day – another. Skips the third idea, buys something else on day four. Then another one. Puts 5–10% of the portfolio into each. ...
The Russian stock market’s been hard to look at without tears in recent years. Entirely in line with the broader situation in the country and reflects the public mood. What should you do in a situation like this – in Russia or anywhere else? Depends on your investment horizon. If it is long – say, 10, 15, 20 years or more – you can essentially do nothing at all. Just keep investing in stocks, understanding that price fluctuations, stagnation, and drawdowns are a normal part of the process – the price you pay for the potentially higher long-term returns of equities as an asset class. Perhaps the only thing worth striving for is to select good stocks and improve portfolio efficiency when possible. ...
“A stock is undervalued” sometimes means nothing more than: “I spent a long time building a careful model and, in the process, convinced myself that I was right. I checked all the numbers, factored in growth, discounted the cash flows, calculated fair value – surely I didn’t spend all that time for nothing! Now all that remains is to wait until the market finally agrees with me.” Been there. For example, I held Alibaba stock for almost two years, roughly from 2021 to 2023. The price kept falling, yet according to analysts, the stock was still “undervalued.” Say, it was $100 with a $140 target, then gradually turned $50 with a $70 target. In both cases, +40% upside. Except I had already lost 50%. And even if the new target ($70) were eventually reached, I would still be down 30% from my purchase price. It helps to remember: “fair value” is just our opinion (or the average opinion of a small group of analysts), while the market price reflects the decisions of a vast number of participants, a good many of whom do not build any models at all. ...
Claims that knowing the 30 most commonly used words is enough to speak any foreign language (like Ellochka the Cannibal, I guess), or even 100 words, remind me of “investing from 6 rubles” – lies and marketing. I’ve been stuffing Italian into my head for six months now, the counter passed 2.5 thousand a while ago, and I still understand only about half of beginner texts on the fly. Better every day, but still. Italian from scratch. An experiment. I’m actually curious how this ends. ...
Sadly, I don’t get a pretty piece of paper with a coat of arms. ESG, you know, global warming and all that. But I did get a checkmark in a blue circle next to my website address on Yandex, basically saying, “verified, safe.” One condition: in the context of offering investment advisory services, only I get to send you pictures like this. I know those demons. They scatter my documents all over the internet, luring gullible people who knows where. ...
Here’s a fresh one for you. “Hello, could you please tell me, on Instagram they’re offering investments starting at 10 000 rubles and guaranteeing 150 to 250 percent within 48 hours. They sent me a photo of your certificate. Is this really your company doing this?” I’m genuinely curious – what goes on in people’s heads? Fine, scammers, at least they make money off it. But the people who fall for this – what are they thinking? Are they thinking at all? What in life goes up or down by 250% every 48 hours? Your salary? Body temperature? Rainfall? ...