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2016 Goals


doughishere

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Guest notorious546

- check my stock prices less regularly

- read more disclosures than last year

- attend an AGM/Meetups/conference which is value oriented

- learn more from great investors, ideally meet a few!

- get a job in asset management, value fund

- go scuba diving

- climb more mountains, (perhaps kilimanjaro)

- stop buying kindle books i don't actually read

- capitalize on each long weekend to see people i don't regularly, or experience something new

- find more ways to help people, (ie volunteering or random odd jobs)

 

this is probably way too many things to do now that i have finished listing all of this. Perhaps the real goal is to do less but be better at the few things i do. Time to contemplate.

 

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Guest longinvestor

I should probably learn to lighten up a bit on names when they touch 52 week highs!

 

+1 My goal as well. Make selling mathematical versus emotional.

 

Having followed your posts, this is a good approach for those of us needing to make regular withdrawals. I just downloaded a simple (Yahoo) stock price spreadsheet, http://investexcel.net/multiple-stock-quote-downloader-for-excel/

 

Then compare current price against "High"s for 3 months, 1 year and 3 year periods. If YES, YES, YES, raise 1 years worth cash, else just for the quarter.

 

Also share your approach of concentration, which makes this a brief effort! And if a years worth of cash raised, can return to "lazy"

 

 

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Hi fellow "long investor"! Thanks to the lower 2016 minimum RRIF withdrawal rules, I think I have cash for the year. But sometimes a stock just keeps going and I should sell some more! Valient was a prime example this year. I sold some when it was at a 52 week high at $170 Cdn. And I should have followed "my rule" when it topped $300 and sold some more, before it returned to its current $160!

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2015 was a volatile year (personally speaking). Been attached to a 4-yr business project that has tested my patience, my sanity and my family. In 2016, I''ll be finally moving on.

 

2016 Goals

 

1. Get a new gig - anything will do, so long as I'm not working from home and get some work/life balance.

2. Health and well being - my health has taken its toll over the last 4 yrs, so getting back into jiu-jitsu training, finding a tennis partner, bike-riding with friends

3. Family - more fishing trips with my son, finally make my wife happy and commit to more DIY projects at home and take her for salsa classes.

4. Learn to code (VB, C#, C++ and Python for now), a means of career development, I plan to create small projects for myself and basically learn by doing. (For those who have taught themselves.. Any advice/resources are welcome).

5. Attend more meetups, join a local Toastmasters club.

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2016 Goals

 

1. Get a new gig - anything will do, so long as I'm not working from home and get some work/life balance.

2. Health and well being - my health has taken its toll over the last 4 yrs, so getting back into jiu-jitsu training, finding a tennis partner, bike-riding with friends

3. Family - more fishing trips with my son, finally make my wife happy and commit to more DIY projects at home and take her for salsa classes.

4. Learn to code (VB, C#, C++ and Python for now), a means of career development, I plan to create small projects for myself and basically learn by doing. (For those who have taught themselves.. Any advice/resources are welcome).

5. Attend more meetups, join a local Toastmasters club.

 

Looks like you and I may be on a similar path.

Needs more of a life balance but more reestablishing those good friendships lost through the years. Also looking to work from home since my last career had me all over Ontario at times.

 

My tennis partner is in Alberta and I haven't played in years. And I desperately need to get back in shape. Playing old guy slo pitch just doesn't cut it. Learning Karate has always been something I've wanted to do.

 

Being a lifelong contractor/custom home builder, surprisingly I also have a list of DIY projects around our house needing to be complete. Also helping my wife get back into singing in some way is something I'd like to help her with. She essentially gave that up when we had our first daughter.

 

Transitioning to my 2nd career (hopefully) requires C#, .NET, SQL.

Advice from someone a couple of month into it, you need an endgame in sight. Learning to code was useless for me without a desired outcome other than just learning to code. My wife is in software and her lead developer helped me put a plan in place (somewhat) to become a Microsoft Dynamics developer. Learning with that in mind has made it much easier to wrap my head around.

Making apps or programs for yourself to learn is a good idea though. I've heard from many sources to code every single day without fail. Even just 10-15 minutes.

 

 

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4. Learn to code (VB, C#, C++ and Python for now), a means of career development, I plan to create small projects for myself and basically learn by doing. (For those who have taught themselves.. Any advice/resources are welcome).

 

Do you have any prior coding experience? If not, Python is a great place to start. C# and Java are also good choices. Stay away from C++. It's a hard language to learn, especially as your first one.

 

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4. Learn to code (VB, C#, C++ and Python for now), a means of career development, I plan to create small projects for myself and basically learn by doing. (For those who have taught themselves.. Any advice/resources are welcome).

 

Do you have any prior coding experience? If not, Python is a great place to start. C# and Java are also good choices. Stay away from C++. It's a hard language to learn, especially as your first one.

 

Been a software engineer for 15 years... I don't think any of the above is bad advice, but if you want to do any web-related things, I think the best place to start is by learning JavaScript. It's an easy language to learn, and it is a requirement that you use JavaScript to do anything interesting in a web browser. With Node.js you can do server-side things, and now with React-native, you can build native mobile apps on iOS and Android. If you are strictly looking to do data processing, statistics, and machine learning, then Python is probably the right language for you. Also, in my EXTREMELY biased opinion - run as fast as you can away from Windows. All of the important open source software out there is done on Linux/OSX, and all of the examples you find will assume you are running Linux/OSX.

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Quit active investing.

Really? - Please elaborate a bit, Jurgis.

 

I don't believe I add value through my investing decisions. And it probably would be more useful to society if I spent more time on projects in my primary occupation rather than trying to get extra return by actively investing.

 

This is probably correct for 95% of the population and probably 80% of the posters in investment forums as well. I know I underperformed this year and only matched the index last year. I don't think I had much alpha during the last 5 years, so at that jars stick, I think one is better off taking a step back and check if things that one had been doing still make sense. I do think that index investing can be bad advice too, if the whole world goes nuts, like what happened in 1999/2000. During 2000 and he following years, I was able to outperform. That has proven to be more of a challenge lately.

 

I don't think that going passive investing is a balaclava and white thing, you can attach yourself to some great minds and just own what they are owning. BRK comes to my mind. Best idea that Inhave regarding active investing is to look more how to avoid mistakes, that finding home runs. The oil disaster was knew that probably was avoidable, although I got sucked into that one as well to some extend.

 

I was trying to go this way this year already, but got sucked in into oil morass and some other interesting "opportunities".  8)

 

Most likely I'll just dump most money into BRK/Fairfax/Malone and couple more "forever" holds. I've been going in this direction already.

(And before we have religious argument that this is also "active" investing - yes, I know, next question  8) ).

 

The counterargument to this is that putting money in BRK/Fairfax this year would have been even worse than my oil-dragged portfolio.  :o But this is for 2015 results thread.  8)

 

Peace.

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Also, in my EXTREMELY biased opinion - run as fast as you can away from Windows. All of the important open source software out there is done on Linux/OSX, and all of the examples you find will assume you are running Linux/OSX.

 

Yeah, thanks for that.

My wife, brother in law and a couple of friends work for or have worked for Microsoft partners and hopefully in a year or two this will include me. The money to be made is absolutely disgusting. There is so much to be made in all aspects of software development that closing off something like Microsoft because they're not open source is closed minded. If that's what interests you.

 

But you did say your opinion is biased.  ;D

So is mine.

 

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- check my stock prices less regularly

- read more disclosures than last year

- attend an AGM/Meetups/conference which is value oriented

- learn more from great investors, ideally meet a few!

- get a job in asset management, value fund

- go scuba diving

- climb more mountains, (perhaps kilimanjaro)

- stop buying kindle books i don't actually read

- capitalize on each long weekend to see people i don't regularly, or experience something new

- find more ways to help people, (ie volunteering or random odd jobs)

 

this is probably way too many things to do now that i have finished listing all of this. Perhaps the real goal is to do less but be better at the few things i do. Time to contemplate.

 

Most of what notorius wrote

 

Also:

Deposit 8000 SEK/month ( $1000)

Keep running and get back into climbing (now with my kid) about once a week. Help my wife get two big time chunks for her hobbies a week (3-4 h).

Keep studying investing/valuation/sociology/psychology. Have a blog/page where I put my Writing (analysis / book notes / commentary).

Keep working part time even if it means my career doesn't go straight to the moon.

Remember to book a holiday with some sun in November because this year was depressing:)

 

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To stay out of trouble, in every aspect of life, including investing, i.e.:

  • No bagging of other broads than "she" - else I suppose I would wake up one morning from a forced anesthesia, and - most likely to my surprise - looking at an open can of mashed tomatoes, placed on the night table, with no tomatoes in the can, the can just containing my balls [most likely I would also conclude that she castrated me using the lid of the open can after getting rid of the mashed tomatoes, not using a scalpel],
  • Buying more boring and dull stocks at reasonable prices for the purpose of a - hopefully - satisfactory return in the long run.

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To stay out of trouble, in every aspect of life, including investing, i.e.:

  • No bagging of other broads than "she" - else I suppose I would wake up one morning from a forced anesthesia, and - most likely to my surprise - looking at an open can of mashed tomatoes, placed on the night table, with no tomatoes in the can, the can just containing my balls [most likely I would also conclude that she castrated me using the lid of the open can after getting rid of the mashed tomatoes, not using a scalpel],
  • Buying more boring and dull stocks at reasonable prices for the purpose of a - hopefully - satisfactory return in the long run.

 

I would add that divorce is a legitimate option if the situation warrants it, likewise, once you've done this, don't look back, don't drive by, don't call, you have to believe you had good reasons for a breakup. Hopefully if the research phase was solid, this won't be necessary :)

 

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  • 1 year later...

Follow-UP:

 

Also:

Deposit 8000 SEK/month ( $1000) - FAIL, probably 5000. It felt less urgent when portfolio was doing great.

Keep running and get back into climbing (now with my kid) about once a week. Help my wife get two big time chunks for her hobbies a week (3-4 h).  - Semi success, but now no time due to having another kid.

Keep studying investing/valuation/sociology/psychology. Have a blog/page where I put my Writing (analysis / book notes / commentary).  - Semi success.

Keep working part time even if it means my career doesn't go straight to the moon. - Yes, still chugging along at work.

Remember to book a holiday with some sun in November because this year was depressing:) - FAIL, due to kid arriving. Time to book something for Easter instead.

Check prices less regularly - FAIL

Get an investing job - FAIL

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Mostly studying. I started writing a bit here: scandismallcap.com, nothing that interesting yet though.

 

One of the write-ups I did (on google drive) I sent to the editor of the stock-section of a major swedish newspaper that used it as a base for a writeup today. 4th biggest holding (Stendörren) went 5% on that while index down:) maybe should have pump&dump as a new strategy for this year..

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Follow-UP:

 

Also:

Deposit 8000 SEK/month ( $1000) - FAIL, probably 5000. It felt less urgent when portfolio was doing great.

Keep running and get back into climbing (now with my kid) about once a week. Help my wife get two big time chunks for her hobbies a week (3-4 h).  - Semi success, but now no time due to having another kid.

Keep studying investing/valuation/sociology/psychology. Have a blog/page where I put my Writing (analysis / book notes / commentary).  - Semi success.

Keep working part time even if it means my career doesn't go straight to the moon. - Yes, still chugging along at work.

Remember to book a holiday with some sun in November because this year was depressing:) - FAIL, due to kid arriving. Time to book something for Easter instead.

Check prices less regularly - FAIL

Get an investing job - FAIL

 

It's called the dynamics of life! Congrats on the family extension! Happy to see you back posting.

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