Experimental investing reportcard 2013

I ran a few ‘experiments’ during the year, some of which I wrote about on the blog. As the year draws to a close, I am preparing the report card and as always it’s a mixed one – Lots of D and F and not a single A J

One point to keep in mind is that I run these experiments with miniscule amounts of money. The emotional pain is no less if the experiment fails, but the damage to the wallet is minimal (as my wife puts it, everyone needs their vices J).

Let’s look at some of these experiments, learnings and plans for next year.

Buying dirt cheap stocks
The main ‘idea’ behind these positions was that the stock was dirt cheap and hence once the pessimism cleared, the price would bounce back

Let’s look at two cases under this category

Business cycle related
The capital goods sector has been hit very hard in the last few years and the news worsened during the year. As I wrote in this post – ‘How I think about macro’, I personally thought the pessimism around this sector was overdone and one could look for some quality firms in the industry to take a position at rock bottom valuations.

My pick was BHEL as it was selling at a 10 year low in terms of valuation (you can download my calculations from here) and I personally thought that if the company could be profitable even under such trying circumstances, then it was worth a bet.

You can see the price action below

As you can make out, my timing was hardly perfect. I was early and averaged down as the price kept dropping. My average cost worked out to around 120 and my sale price was around 160, resulting in around 35% gain during the period

So what’s the grade ? It’s a B at best for the following reasons

Learnings
- I don’t have timing skills and this episode proved it again. I care about buying at the right price rather than at the right time. However in the above example, it is important to get the timing right too, otherwise one will have to wait for a long time. A number of fellow investors I know are experts at this – but I am not. As a result, this type of investing has rarely worked for me.
- Due to the lack of timing skills (and being aware of it), I have been hesitant to create a large position in such opportunities. The result of a small position is that a 33% return, does not move the needle on the portfolio. As a result, buying such kind of stocks, which I do not plan to hold for the long term are just a waste of time (for me)
- These kinds of timing opportunities in the end may just be good to keep me entertained, but will not add to my returns in the long run.

Management issue

I wrote about zylog here. I  laid out the argument for this position in the post and the reason for the eventual exit.

What was the net result ? A 70% loss and an F grade.

It is easy to look at this episode with hindsight bias (management was suspect and hence one should not touch the stock).  Around the same time last year, I was looking at some high profile cases of failure (read here) and wanted to test the following hypothesis – is it possible to figure out management fraud from publicly available documents such as annual reports (market grapevine does not count).

I looked at zylog and saw that the stock had dropped to around 20% of its peak price. As I could not find anything suspicious in the documents, I decided to create a tiny position in the company.

The above trade turned out to be a disaster as it soon became known that the management was indulging in insider trading.

Learnings

- The above action by a management would land it in jail in most countries. In India, they are just prohibited from trading in the market. Should we still wonder, why the small investor does not trust the stock market ?. I learnt a powerful lesson from this episode  - if there is some smoke, there is usually a fire.

- As a small investor, I am a sitting duck and can be taken for a ride by a management if they wish to do so, without any consequences. The best bet for me is to have zero tolerance for management ethics. If something is fishy, don’t touch the stock, no matter how attractive the idea.

Value trade
I wrote about this short term opportunity here. As I noted in the post, this is a stock which had become cheap for  short term reasons (quarterly earnings miss), though there was no long term issue or any management concerns.

The idea was to buy the stock dirt cheap and sell once the short term pessimism wears off. The price action of this trade is given below

 

So what was the net result – around 40% gain and I would give myself a B+.

This type of investing is more suited to my personal temperament. I am able to analyze that the market is being too pessimistic due to short term factors. If the business is doing fine and there are no management issues, I am able to take a mid size position and make reasonable returns over a one year time frame.

These kinds of opportunities are not risk free (infinite computers has its own issues) and there is always an element of luck in it. However, some of these opportunities can act as placeholders for cash, if I cannot find something better to do.

Not all trading
If you have started reading my blog recently, you may feel that I am into short term trading. That is miles from the actual reality. The above cases, are just experiments on the side, representing not more than 1% of my personal portfolio.

Why do it ? I will put it down to curiosity. I just like to explore different approaches and see how they work out. In the end, most of them turn out to be unsuitable to my temperament. I am not saying that these are not valid approaches (others may do it well), but just that they don’t suit my temperament,

The long term changes
The key change I have been focusing on my core portfolio, is moving towards higher focus or concentration. I have kept a fairly diversified portfolio in the past with majority of positions under 10% of the total portfolio. I have now started increasing the size of some positions where I have a higher level of confidence in them.

Chicken that I am, the move is likely to be very slow and measured.

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Stocks discussed in this post are for educational purpose only and not recommendations to buy or sell. Please contact a certified investment adviser for your investment decisions. Please read disclaimer towards the end of blog.