All good suggestions. Thank you. So, here is a hypothetical.
Over the years you have read investor letters/books/articles by/of Buffett, Graham, Fisher, Lynch, Greenblatt, Klarman, Einhorn, Ackman, Loeb, Pabrai, Druckenmiller, etc etc. You have bought into value investing philosophy (50 cents on a dollar, buy businesses with moat, pay less than intrinsic value, margin of safety, yada yada yada). Overtime you have developed your own investment style. You have curated a list of few hundred businesses from Valueline. Common theme is 1) business has been around for a while (at least 10 years of financials), 2) business generates profit and positive operating cash flow, 3) median ROIC of 15% or more over 10 years, 4) business has a potential to be in existence 5-10 years from now. You have now invested in 70 or so of these businesses over the past 7-8 years.
You have decent understanding of DCF and other valuation methodologies. But, who has time to run a DCF on all the companies you are interested in. Further, you have no confidence or conviction in your valuation. So, you put new money to use only when there is a drawdown (earning miss, analyst downgrade, 52 week low, etc). You seldom sell. Your result has been satisfactory. Let's say IRR of 15%. I use IRR because new money has been added over the years.
You have done your time - worked long hours/late nights/weekends pushing paper in financial services industry. You have no more desire to manage direct reports, do not want your boss' job and do not want to commute an hour and half each way to lower Manhattan.
Now, let's say you are now in a fortunate position to fire your employer. Your wife has a job that she loves and has positive impact to the society. Your kids enjoy having you around whenever they need you (pickup/drop off from school, ride to sports and after school activities, homework help, call from school to fetch musical instrument or Math workbook because they forgot, etc). Your family members/friends have also entrusted you with their capital and you have invested their capital in some (not all) of the same 70 companies. They are low maintenance, require very infrequent updates and are happy with their investment returns. You do not collect any fees nor do you intend to.
The question now is how do you fill your time from 8:30am to until kids come home from school? Let's say you already do these things and enjoying doing them: 1) read FT/WSJ/NYT 2) listen to earning calls (or read transcripts) 3) read investor presentations 4) skim through 10Qs and 10Ks.
What else does a full time investor do if he/she does not have an administrative burden of running a fund? Don't say do more of the above because you only have a mental bandwidth to do one or two of each per day. The goal here is to fill the day with meaningful work (business/investment related) so you avoid unforced errors like 1) engaging in dubious merger arbitrages 2) shorting Tesla or indexes because you have a view that they are overvalued or 3) investing in companies you know nothing about (and are outside of the list mentioned above) because call for action is really loud in the COBF community.
