Hamburg Investor

I am an amateur investor, living in Hamburg, Germany. Here's my evolution in a nutshell:

1. Early failure in the Dotcom area: I failed in the dotcom area by investing my first 750 Euro, which I earned by different mac jobs. The market was down by 75 percent, when I bought in. I was thinking, it couldn't go down any more. But it did. By another 75%.

2. Reading, reading, reading and learning: ETFs and Buffett, classical Value Investing: That was my personal starting point for reading a lot. Why was I so wrong? First I read about ETF portfolios and than soon I found my way to Buffett and value investing. I read Graham and all old annual reports of Buffett, later from Gayner and Prem. Greenblatt, Davis, Siegel. To me that made totally sense. I had only little to invest, but I very much liked the process and thinking und es funktionierte.

3. Combining Micro, Value and Momentum strategies: Then I read further (e. g. O'Shaugnessy, Antonacci, Schifirin). I changed my philosophy and tried to gain an edge by investing primarily in micro caps and value investments and combining this with momentum. So I bought myself a screener with different strategies and analysed the best companies before investing. This worked extremely well and I outperformed the S&P 500 by miles for four years (outperformance in 2012: +17%, 2013: minus 10%, 2014: +25%, 2015: +16%; after taxes and fees for a total of +170% in 4 years, while the S&P500 delivered only 85% including dividends pretax). 

4. New goal: Finding the longterm winners. Quality and focus investments: I was very satisfied with the results. But it was very time-consuming, and taxes and fees ate up a large portion of the profits.

And so I opted for a less strenuous long-term strategy (inspired by the Davis Dynasty, Munger, Buffett, Gayner): The goal was to identify the long-term winners and try to outperform the market by 5% (15% target return) – with an investment horizon of "forever". So no more buying and selling (and if possible: No dividends). With this strategy, I then focused more on insurance investments from 2016 onwards, particularly Berkshire, Markel and Fairfax Financial (also Danaher, Brookfield, Smurfit Kappa and Fairfax India). I usually only rebalanced 10% per year. Today (2025) Fairfax is my biggest position with 45% of my portfolio, my biggest 4 positions add up to 75% of my portfolio and my biggest 6 to 89%. From 2016 until 2020 I lagged the market (growth, low interest rates, soft market haven't helped me an my strategy). Since 2021 I am well ahead again.

Some more information about me in a nutshell:

Investors I admire most: Buffett, Munger, Watsa, Gayner, Davis. 

10 Books and Authors that changed my way of thinking (excluding Buffett, Graham, Munger, Watsa, Gayner and books about them and from them, annual letters etc.):

1. Siegel (Stocks for the long run)
2. Rothchild (Davis Dynasty)
3. Antonacci (Dual Momentum Investing)
4. O'Shaugnessy (What works on Wall Street: The classic guide to the best-prforming investment strategies of all time)
5. Greenblatt (Big secret for the small investor, You Can Be a Stock Market Genius, The Little Book That Beats the Market)
6. Pabrai (Dhando Investor)
7. Spier (Education of a value investor)
8. Mihaljevic (e. g. Manual of ideas)
9. Lynch (Beating the street)
10. Schifirn (The Warren Buffetts next door: How 12 private investors made millions in the stock market)

Other books I like: Thomas (Free Capital). Greenwald (From Graham to Buffett and Beyond), Fisher (Common stocks and uncommon profits), Browne (The Little Book of Value Investing), Tilson (e. g. Art of Value Investing), Vanhaverbeke (Excess returns), Hill (Think and grow rich), Hagstrom (Buffet, Newton, Darwin), de Mello (The 3G way), Leber/Green (Great minds of investing), Jim Rogers (Street Smarts)