Losing in Order to Win: Secrets Behind $150,000 of Investing Mistakes

Buying individual growth stocks?

You need protection from yourself

If you want to be an investor in individual companies, you should know that the odds are stacked against you. Dalbar inc. research shows that most investors fail to outperform the market indices over prolonged periods of time. Over half of publicly listed companies underperform. There are good reasons why the consensus opinion is that dollar-cost averaging into index funds is your best route to long term wealth creation. Only a small group of companies will beat the market, so is buying individual companies as an amateur a fool’s errand?  

I’d argue that the key to success is to own the right stocks. But stock selection is only one component of investment success. The other crucial part comes down to your behaviour. If you've struggled with making investing mistakes, it's not your fault. The same genetic and physiological traits that have helped humans survive throughout history mean we are designed to be terrible investors. We are hardwired to be reactive, emotional, and short-termist. It’s easy to harm your returns by being your own worst enemy, even if you buy great companies. Add together your natural biases, a lack of strategy and poor decision making and you have a recipe for bad outcomes. At that point, the only thing left to bail you out is luck.

Most investing information shared online focuses on successes. Survivorship bias means that most people on Fintwit want to talk about their greatest hits. Not a lot of attention is given to failures. This is a silent tragedy because reflections on mistakes are an incredibly powerful source of learning. As Charlie Munger says, “always invert”.

If you are new to investing in growth companies, you are likely to make predictable errors. You rarely get to learn from the mistakes of other investors because they are hidden away. Everybody has them, but nobody wants to talk about them. You are likely to make them because people shy away from letting you know about them. Mistakes are normal, and an important part of learning. Understanding the lessons up front could save you precious time and money, help avoid sleepless nights, and prevent awkward conversations with people you care about.

In this video course, you will learn how to reduce the frequency and lessen the impact of avoidable investing mistakes. Mistakes that have cost me over $150,000 to date. I break down how and why they happened, show the cost of my errors and share tools to help you avoid making them yourself. I'll be sharing strategies and tactics that are proven to work.

Imagine trying to build a house by picking up a few bricks, some sand, and cement from a stranger. Would you lay them randomly and expect a beautiful result? Of course not. You'd probably think it was a better idea to talk things through with an architect and builder and come up with a plan. Yet new investors rarely spend the time to lay out what they are trying to achieve and how they plan to do it. Instead, they typically spend days obsessing over which stocks to buy, watching too much CNBC, reading too much Bloomberg, and scouring Twitter and the web for hot tips without a structured process or guiding philosophy. This haphazard approach to investing leads to poor returns, wasted time, and unnecessary regret due to unforced errors.

How is it Different?

This course is different because I'm giving you the unvarnished truth about the cost of my biggest failures. It’s not theoretical. It is based on my personal experience. I break down the reasons behind my mistakes and give you actionable information to help you avoid making them. I’ve kept it simple and accessible. No magic bullets and no filler. I cannot tell you how you should be investing your money. My portfolio is already available online for full transparency on what I hold. I do not want and don’t suggest you should copy/paste my transactions or positions. I am not interested in pumping stocks that I own.

You should recognise that investors have different goals, approaches, time horizons, risk and volatility tolerances. You need to answer key questions for yourself to prevent wasting your time and your money. This course helps you understand why it is so important. 

Who is Adventures in Financial Independence?

3 and a half years ago I took stock of our financial situation. I had a wonderful wife, beautiful kids, a stable job and a nice home. It all looked like success from the outside. But in reality we were stuck on a hamster wheel and caught in a middle-class financial trap. 

Things weren't right with our finances as I looked to the future. The nice home came with a big mortgage. I hated the idea of working for the next 25 years just to pay off the bank. I worried that our kids might have fewer opportunities than their parents due to ever-increasing costs of living, rising costs of education and high property prices. I wouldn't get my pension till I was 68 years old. I didn't want to spend the next 30 years of my working life forced to trade precious time for money. I wanted to be there for my kids as they grew older. I decided to improve our financial future by investing in the stock market. I took a high-risk strategy that I WOULD NOT recommend: I took out a $55,000 (£40,000) personal loan to invest with alongside my savings of £20,000.

The stakes were high. What followed was one of the steepest learning curves of my life. I started investing via trial and error. I listened to podcasts, subscribed to newsletters. I bought shares in some excellent companies. I had some early success and got overconfident. I didn’t realise the full extent of what I didn’t know and I mismanaged my investments, costing precious time and money. I’ve had sleepless nights worrying I would end up making things worse for our family. I made a series of embarrassing rookie mistakes when I first started. I traded when I was supposed to be investing. I didn’t know how to buy right. I sold great companies too soon. I'm sharing my screw-ups so that you don't have to make them too. I want to help to shorten your learning curve by showing how mistakes can compound against you. And I’ll show you the steps you can take to reduce their impact.

I realised that something needed to change. My freestyle approach to investing wasn't giving me the results I wanted and I was a victim of my own emotions. I had previously been a management consultant for a Big 4 firm. My role had been to analyse and solve process problems in large organisations. I decided to apply a similar approach to my investing. Everything changed for me when I become more structured and intentional about my investment process. My investor policy statement is my guide for decision making. I use checklists for my buying, risk assessment, and selling decisions. I am far more confident about what I am looking for, I have much more clarity, and find it much easier to say no to ideas that do not match my philosophy. My portfolio has grown to over  >$200,000 (£150,000). I’m optimistic about the future. I sleep far better these days. If you want to learn more about my story or skin in the game, please visit my blog at https://adventuresinfi.substack.com/

Why are you anonymous and how can I trust what you are saying?

I'm a normal guy with a public sector job, a wife, kids in school and a large extended family. I live in the UK, where no one wants to talk about money. I share my full portfolio value on my blog. If I wasn't anonymous, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it, especially considering the loan element when I got started. I have written a monthly summary every month in 2020 laying out the ups and downs of my journey. Since my Twitter account has grown to over 21,000 readers, I have had multiple offers to post for payment or promotion, all of which I have turned down. Integrity is important to me. I gain nothing by being dishonest. I'm not trying to convince you that I am some sort of guru - quite the opposite. I know I have gaps in my knowledge. I have made a lot of mistakes - the whole idea of this course is to share them so you can learn from them. 

Who is this for?

This course is for you if:

You believe that investing in individual companies is part of your strategy and would like to learn important lessons from failure without having to make them yourself

You are a long term, growth orientated, buy-and-hold style investor learning the ropes via trial and error and would like to shorten your learning curve

Do you want to be intentional about your investment decisions, and are you looking for tools to help you:

• Be more confident about your investing goals

• Reduce the likelihood, frequency, and cost of preventable mistakes

• Make more consistent investing decisions

• Stay in the game long enough to get compounding working in your favour 

Who this is not for

• If you are looking for fast money, this course isn’t for you. I don’t have a magic method to make money materialise from your screen

• If you are looking for hot stock tips, a trading room or signal service, this isn’t for you

• I don’t have an algorithmic system that could make you $100,000 twelve months from now... 

This is not a step by step investing 101 video course or a course on fundamental analysis

Finally, this course will not do the work for you. It is down to you to apply the relevant lessons to your goals

If you are an experienced investor, the course is likely to be less suitable for you

What You’ll Get

Over 1hr45 of video content covering:

$150,000 worth of investing mistakes and strategies to prevent them

A tool to help you develop your own investor policy statement based on your personal goals, psychology and financial situation

An easy to use checklist to assess growth companies that you can modify to suit your requirements

A risk assessment checklist that covers the company under consideration, the stock, and your behaviour to help prevent impulsive behaviour and stop you making costly mistakes

A rapid review checklist for your existing investments to help you assess whether you should still keep a company in your portfolio

Not financial advice

This is not financial advice. I am not a financial expert, professional or adviser. I am an individual investor simply sharing my opinion and what I’ve learned in my first 3.5 years. As you will find out, I’ve made plenty of mistakes - over $150,000 worth of them. If you are not the sort of person who is willing to take responsibility for your own decisions, you should not buy this course.

No-Risk 14-Day 100% Refund Policy

If you don’t get value from this course you can apply for a friendly refund within 14 days of delivery. 

What are the Alternatives?

Option 1

You can do nothing. But it’s hard to get better by doing nothing.

Option 2

You can read about psychology, behavioural economics, and philosophy. There is a lot of great work on those subjects, and regardless of whether you buy the course or not, this is a good idea. But you won’t get the real-life case studies of companies that are relevant today or the frameworks that I have developed for you to customise to your needs.

Option 3

You can figure out these lessons by trial and error. I know it’s possible - it is what I did. But it cost me a few years, a lot of money, and a lot of sleepless nights to do it. You also miss out on laughing at my investment blunders and learning from them.

Option 4 

The best option. 

Try the course at no risk, shorten your learning curve and use the lessons and tools to save yourself time and money.

I look forward to seeing you inside!

[ ice cream pic by https://unsplash.com/@rojekilian ]