Well best wishes with that and it's very much horses for courses.
I differ very strongly in my approach to
@madamswer and
@MarsC to the point where I have little in common with them. With each of my successful investments I pointed and explained how I saw the value but they could not see it.
To be fair it's sort of a personal ideosyncratic thing, my friends who have invested with me are pleased and owe me a few beers but no fees for the privilege. I wouldn't really expect strangers on an internet forum to do the same. I also was thwarted by the "Macro" at MND - there's always room for improvement.
So I don't really give a crap what Benjamin Graham would have invested in if alive today. Probably he wouldn't have liked the cashflows at SHJ and he would have wanted hard assets, I have and certainly still do play that game.
It's the philosophy which he had that I subscribe to and give him credit for but I am much more varied in my approach. Ben Graham and Warren Buffett never got up in the morning wanting to invest like someone else and neither do I.
I am privileged to have learned from Ben because he generously shared his ideas in a way that's really not very capitalist and his partners hated. If he had just been interested in making more money for himself we would never have heard from him right? He retired at 50 because he had enough, if there's a secret he had it was that he never cared about money - he was interested in it as art.
Starting with the knowledge gleaned from a lifetime of investing through the great depression is absolutely amazing though right? Starting from a standpoint of what I would call glorious conservatism.
You can make some money on net-nets, Forager and Sandon can beat the market by 1 or 2% per annum lol. Anyone can do that, easy - you guys can too I am sure by following a few of Ben's ideas.
But Ben laid the groundwork for as many different paths as there are people and very few seem to really "get" the entirety of what he said.
As I have said SHJ is a speculation for me and I don't care what Madamswer and MarsC think or who the hell Jesus Christ thinks he is. You haven't addressed in there the criteria which I would research SHJ further if I had time. I invest with my own style - Anarchists do not follow or lead.
As to risk, a few years of acceptable returns certainly does not make an investor only time will tell but the way a capitalist thinks about risk is defective. Who takes the risk at Santos, me as an investor buying 41,000 shares on a strong balance sheet with an eye to the commodities cycle - or the hundreds of wage slaves laid off/cast aside as worthless on completion of the GLNG project.
For me risk is life and death, money is only money - if you are sure about something and it's very attractive then it should be 20% of your portfolio or not worth buying at all.
Or risk is skiing in the mountains, 19 times out of 20 you may survive a beautiful powder day 38° slope wind loaded and just get so much fun.
Then the 20th time you get blown by an avalanche at 100kph off a cliff - a very good financial analogy. A few good years often leads to an SGH.
There are old pilots and there are bold pilots right?
Or risk is surfing the ocean, there are no hedges and there is no forgiveness it's only you and Tangaroa (or Takaloa as the Hawaiians say). Well how long can you hold your breath, the only way to learn how big is too big is by nearly drowning a bunch of times.
As humans we can manage and adapt to all kinds of life and death risks but corporate risk management decisions are poor because they don't happen in an aura of scarcity. Santos lost $90m on the "zero cost collar" I didn't want them to take because the money doesn't matter to them.
So then as to grey hairs, yes I want them if it means a life well lived. But how can a life be well lived if it doesn't include calculated risks and seizing the day?
That's always the argument against value investing, how much risk did you take - well I focus on the process not the outcome and I will continue to refine that and improve. The point of it is that you take very little risk and through taking minimal risk get the excellent returns.
That's what I have been doing and I am not bothered by doubters before or doubters now, frankly I no longer bat an eyelid at a $200,000 paper loss as it literally does not mean anything.
Does that make sense? What I am saying is that these times of panic are not at all stressful only enjoyable, life is all about embracing intelligent risks and it's the method to my apparent madness that means I sleep well at night.
I am just hitting my powerband in this game - the best is yet to come.
