Liberty

As an aside, what Warren actually said is that if someone had a punchcard and could only do 20 stocks, they'd almost certainly get better results, because it would make them research them like crazy and really understand what they own and think long-term and trade less for no good reason. People often take away the wrong thing from what Warren says. Here everybody remembers the 20 slot punch card, while the actual message was "You have to know really really well what you buy and think about it long-term and not trade around too much". 20 is just a number to make a point. Some people might be able to understand hundreds of things, others 5, that's not the point. It's the process behind the metaphor that matters.

You've brought this up again and again over the years. I'm now genuinely curious why you seem to be bothered by them so much. I can understand someone not liking them and not using them, but I don't get why someone would be riled up enough to periodically lobby for others to stop using them. The only reasons I can think of are of the "damn kids, get off my lawn" variety, or "things weren't like this in my day and I don't like change, so if I don't like it nobody should like it, like kids and their damn rap music and snapchat", or maybe some form of snobbism, because what kind of discourse could possibly be elevated by cartoonish pictures, right?. It's short-hand. They prevents all kinds of misunderstandings that happen all the time with text-based communication (without tone of voice, body language, comedic timing, etc). Everybody except a few face-blind people immediately understand how they modify a statement, and since few of us are Hemingway types who will be consistently great at perfectly writing out the nuances of what we mean, they are a very useful tool and safety net. They also encourage economy, because you can get the same thing across with fewer words (imagine how much longer my crap would be!). So basically, this: You suck Kraven ;) :D Is very different from You suck Kraven >:( or You suck Kraven :-[ :-\ So what's the deal? Did a smiley kill your parents when you were but a boy? ???

That's why keeping an investment journal where you write down exactly what you're thinking before doing anything is so valuable. Memory plays tricks on us, and this is a good way to mitigate that.

*roll eyes*

A thread asking people about their misses for the past year is by definition about hindsight. That's the point. My biggest miss of the past year is probably premature accumulation in a very illiquid OTC microcap. I thought it was very cheap, and it then proceeded to get much cheaper (volatility is pretty crazy, there's almost no float and the bid/ask is often 10%+). I think it's only a temporary loss, with fast-growing IV being much higher than the quoted price, and I'm comfortable holding it for the long-term, but I do wish I had been able to buy more at lower prices before getting to a full position.

Thanks Sanjeev! :)

Thank you for the recommendation, I added it to the list. Cheers! :)

Welcome! :)

http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.ca/2014/12/the-oil-price-shock-primary-secondary.html

Unspectacular year? Just to put your "unspectacular year" in perspective. If you start with 100k with those results you'll be a billionaire in a little over 37 years and if you have 1M then in just 28 years. I already have 37 years, so what do you think about that! Nice to dream, but size becomes an anchor rapidly, an multiply any number by zero just once and...

Thanks Jawn, added it to the list.

Thanks for sharing. I might need to try something like that at some point.

Just eyeballing it, I'd say up around 40% so far (in CAD, part of that is currency gains in USD vs CAD). I dodged a few bullets this year. I sold my CFX and ALS positions for strategic reasons, and immediately after that they tanked. I don't expect to be lucky like that very often.

Thanks for sharing JoelS. Must've been quite the trip! If there's one person I'd like to know more about how their thought process worked, it's Singleton.

Nice attempt at channeling Buffett, but he's not saying he wants to sell because it's the end of the year, he's just looking for feedback on what he owns, and the end of the year is as good a time as any for that.

Thanks. Have a good one everybody! :)

Got this one in the mail today.

Energy investors are getting coal in their stocking this year.

Thanks for the links, West. I knew some of those but not all, so I appreciate it very much.

Thanks leftcoast. I'll add that one to the list :) One that I heard about via a recommendation is: http://www.amazon.com/Flight-Titans-Boeing-Airbus-Battle/dp/0753510146 But the reviews make it sound like it's ok, not great.

Transdigm (TDG) has a wide moat. Sole source supplier of most of the relatively low-cost (compared to the price of a plane) but critical parts that they make, regulatory barriers and low absolute market per single part make it not worth even trying to compete, airframes stick around for decades and need aftermarket parts rain or shine (annuity-like characteristics), and they're supplying parts for pretty much everything that flies, civilian and military, so very well diversified. Mastercard/Visa, for reasons that have been explained frequently.

Any recommendations? (Can be civilian or defense or both) Thank you in advance! :)

For the record: Merkhet's a true gentleman. We had a nice private discussion. Sorry everybody for derailing this off-topic.

Now you're the one projecting. I said I was calm, I just wrote what I thought about your comment and that's it, there's nothing to get over. Most of what I know about nature vs nurture comes from evolutionary psychology (The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker and The Moral Animal by Robert Wright are good books that summarize some of the big findings of the field), but it doesn't mean I'm not learning and gathering food for thought from other people's experiences, from Ben Franklin to the people here. So yes, I'll keep doing that.

I'm super calm. I just have something against condescension. Maybe that's not how you meant it, but "I feel like if we debate it a little bit more on the Internet, we should have this question wrapped up in just a few more posts" read basically as a big eye-rolling "you guys are stupid, this is pointless". I just wanted to point out that I didn't think it was pointless, and that even if you thought so, there was no reason to be rude about it. Maybe I misread what you wrote, which is always a possibility with the text format (the exact same line can be read in 10 ways and with 10 different tones and that can change a lot). And I'm the one who posted about settled science, but I didn't mean it as anything that applies here.