Time Horizon

 Line@嗨投資小幫手  『 募集中 』 

How long is the long-term investing? Is it one year, three years, or five years or forever? It is a very philisophical question similar to the purpose of life. It varies. The stock that I hold the longest is a little retail chain that I invested when I graduated from university. I opened a brokerage account as my colleague friend worked for a security firm. This account was in addition to my main brokerage account. I purchased this stock in both accounts. As time went by, I forgot how to access the back-up brokerage account which has continued to own the very stock. I exited most of shares in the company from the main account which continues to hold the odd shares in the stock after guess 8 or 10 years of holding period, with quite a handsome profit at that time. I have to admit that were I holding on to this investment, I’d have had made more money. It is the best investment I ever made and the longest holding period I continue to expend day by day, to this date, I do not have the necessary online access to the account. I made a lot of mistakes during the period of 2013 to 2016. I rebalanced my portfolio in 2017 and have re-focused on value stocks or those in the less volatile industries. One of my investments that is worth mentioning is Charlease. I initially made it as one of the core positions and invested quite a bit when it was trading on its way down to below NTD50. My average price was, I guess, in the range between NTD65 to NTD55. I have incurred significant losses for quite some time. However, when it finally rebounded and I started to offload little by little when the price hit NTD70. I sold my last batch when the price hit closely to NTD90. So, it was again a handsome profit over two to three year period. Were I to hold this investment until now, the profits would have been even better. I belive it would continue to grow according to my initial investment thesis. Unfortunately, I did not stay headfast on this investment. Profit taking? Influenced by macro pitcutre? I guess it was a bit of both. I did own some lousy investments that I wished I had sold them earlier. These investments prompted me to avoid commodity-type companies. However, it does not mean I will not invest. As one of my core investments is of this category and I did lost a lot of money (on paper) during 2017 and 2018 on this investment, I decided to stay put. There are some characteristics that I like about the company: regulatory tailwinds, capex investment through market downturns, fiancial discipline, etc. I invested in the company and exited it three years ago and re-invested when it was trading down as I still belive the fundamentals of the company remain competitive. Two years have passed, but the auto industry, particularly in China, is not in a good shape. It would be a debate which carries the most weight: the bottom-up or top-down approach. If the time horizon is more than this business cycle (3 to 5 years from now), I should do nothing but closely monitor the company quarter by quarter. I one in a while will make short-term trades and the track record of such strategy is ok. However, considering time and efforts, it might not worth it as I tend to allocate only a little bit of capital for such a strategy. Taking a calculted risk within a defined short time period might not alwasy work out the way we like.  As such, I am not more keen on building a system that could generate substainable income in the long run.

 Line@嗨投資小幫手  『 募集中 』