What Is the Best Investment That You've Ever Made?

[Viking]

What Is the Best Investment That You've Ever Made? My choice of life partner. For two key reasons:

1.) she is old school Italian when it comes to spending (very thrifty). It has been very easy for us to live below our means. This allowed us to save significant sums early (we saved one income after we both had graduating from university).
2.) she has always been very supportive of me managing our finances - she has never questioned my choices when it comes to investing. I have been able to compound returns at close to 20% for 20+ years. Having an extremely supportive partner through this journey/process has been pure gold. It has had lots of set backs - but i was always able to keep moving forward because i always have received the right support at home. Investing has always been a blue job. Not a pink. Or purple.

—————-

What Is the Best Investment That You've Ever Made?

 

For me timing matters a lot when answering this question. That is because i am older. A 100% return when i was young (with a small net worth) is very different than a 100% return today (with a much larger net worth). (We also sold our house in mid-2021 and rolled much of the significant proceeds into the stock i mention below.)
 

My best ever investment was loading up on Fairfax in Oct/Nov 2020.

- thesis: i think everyone on this board knows the thesis. Sanjeev pounding the table in Oct 2020 got it back onto my radar.

- holding period: it continues to be my largest holding today.

- position size: i was close to 100% at times (not today).
- return: Fairfax is up more than 200% from its lows in October 2020.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Viking

[John Hjorth]

9 hours ago, beerbaron said:

My prenuptial agreement... on so many levels. Most not financial.

 

Beerbaron

 

@beerbaron,

 

To me, your post quoted above is to me just priceless.

 

If you sincerely love and respect another human being and want the very best for that person, you - naturally [by logic] - want to give that person its freedom to decide for it self, - even if that freedom for that other person does not include your self in that equation to tie!

 

If the bird want to fly, there is nothing other one can do than just let the bird fly, and back it with whatever you've got.

[james22]

~$40 co-pay for a dermatologist visit.

[Spekulatius]

52 minutes ago, james22 said:

~$40 co-pay for a dermatologist visit.

LOL. I am itching to hear more about this.

[Malmqky]

1 hour ago, Spekulatius said:

LOL. I am itching to hear more about this.

I assume skin cancer.

 

a family friend of ours went in to get some moles removed for cosmetic reasons - one of them ended up being cancerous. Things would be very different if she had decided not to get that “cosmetic” procedure.

 

Dermatologists are underrated - not all about aesthetics.

[james22]

2 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

LOL. I am itching to hear more about this.

 

Vacationing and visiting my parents, I just happened to ask what their plans were for the rest of the day as I was leaving.

 

They mentioned my father was seeing his dermatologist and my mother insisted I stay and take the appointment when they learned I'd never seen one.

 

Turns out I had Stage 3 melanoma. Whoops.

 

Surgery two days later and no remission since.

 

I try to remember how lucky I am before I'm too envious of other's good fortune.

[Parsad]

2 hours ago, james22 said:

 

Vacationing and visiting my parents, I just happened to ask what their plans were for the rest of the day as I was leaving.

 

They mentioned my father was seeing his dermatologist and my mother insisted I stay and take the appointment when they learned I'd never seen one.

 

Turns out I had Stage 3 melanoma. Whoops.

 

Surgery two days later and no remission since.

 

I try to remember how lucky I am before I'm too envious of other's good fortune.

 

Glad things turned out well!  Definitely an investment with incredible results.  Cheers

[Spekulatius]

6 hours ago, james22 said:

 

Vacationing and visiting my parents, I just happened to ask what their plans were for the rest of the day as I was leaving.

 

They mentioned my father was seeing his dermatologist and my mother insisted I stay and take the appointment when they learned I'd never seen one.

 

Turns out I had Stage 3 melanoma. Whoops.

 

Surgery two days later and no remission since.

 

I try to remember how lucky I am before I'm too envious of other's good fortune.

Thanks for sharing and good luck with you treatment. My reply to your first post now appears rude - sorry for that, as I wasn’t thinking that far ahead although I am glad I asked. I do agree that those $40 beat everything so far in terms of investment.

 

As I get older, I have found that I do more  proactive preventing maintenance even if insurance doesn’t pay for it. I recently had a coronary heart calcium scan done, because I have high total cholesterol and considered going to statins. Result was all clear though, so I am putting this off, especially since the cholesterol went down a little . Insurance doesn’t pay for this, but copay was only $90 and HSA are great for those things.

 

[james22]

 

1 hour ago, Spekulatius said:

As I get older, I have found that I do more  proactive preventing maintenance even if insurance doesn’t pay for it. I recently had a coronary heart calcium scan done, because I have high total cholesterol and considered going to statins. Result was all clear though, so I am putting this off, especially since the cholesterol went down a little . Insurance doesn’t pay for this, but copay was only $90 and HSA are great for those things.

 

Smart. Doctor recommended?

 

Reminded me of this:

 

In 2013 Harold Varmus, then director of the National Cancer Institute, gave a speech describing how difficult the war on cancer had become. Eradicating cancer – the National Cancer Act’s goal when it was signed in 1971 – seems perpetually distant. Varmus said:

 

"There’s a paradox that we must now honestly confront. Despite the extraordinary progress we’ve made in understanding the underlying defects in cancer cells, we have not succeeded in controlling cancer as a human disease to the extent that I believe is possible."

 

One of the missing pieces, he said, is that we focus too much on cancer treatment and not enough on cancer prevention. If you wanted to make the next big leg up in the war on cancer, you had to make prevention the top priority.

 

But prevention is boring, especially compared to the science and prestige of cancer treatments. So even if we know how important it is, it’s hard for smart people to take it seriously.

 

MIT cancer researcher Robert Weinberg once described it:

 

"If you don’t get cancer, you’re not going to die from it. That’s a simple truth that we sometimes overlook because it’s intellectually not very      stimulating and exciting.

 

Persuading somebody to quit smoking is a psychological exercise. It has nothing to do with molecules and genes and cells, and so people like me are essentially uninterested in it – in spite of the fact that stopping people from smoking will have vastly more effect on cancer mortality than anything I could hope to do in my own lifetime."

 

Breakthrough drugs are amazing, and we should cheer them. But few things are as effective at fighting lung cancer as the boring advice of telling people to quit smoking.

 

https://collabfund.com/blog/investing-the-greatest-show-on-earth/

[Spekulatius]

2 minutes ago, james22 said:

 

 

Smart. Doctor recommended?

 

 

Not directly. I discussed the Cholesterol issue with my wife (she is is a nurse) and then with my doctor on my annual physical. I asked for the CT scan and his opinion and he agreed it would make sense. Same for my wife.

[james22]

1 minute ago, Spekulatius said:

Not directly. I discussed the Cholesterol issue with my wife (she is is a nurse) and then with my doctor on my annual physical. I asked for the CT scan and his opinion and he agreed it would make sense. Same for my wife.

 

Good.

 

The psychology is the difficult thing - can't be too sensitive to risks or the stress will create another problem.

[whatstheofficerproblem]

I would say so far the one time fee for the CoBF membership is paying me dividends everyday.

 

1. META

- Origination & Thesis is CoBF and work, I think Sanj was extremely passionate about it and put the case up. Simultaneously, I was working at a small value hedge fund where the PM also held the same opinion as Sanj. All of this was a month or two after I joined the forum.

- Held it for a year and then sold it, very small position and that was a 200%+ gain.

 

2. CEIX Calls.

- Origination & Thesis is actually VIC, I agreed with the thesis there but did not want to buy the equity, bought some LEAPs a day before earnings.

- Very small position again, but earnings were really good and the stock ripped, ~50% gain in two days, ~100% gain in a month and sold it after it doubled.

[Jaygo]

I have never really had any sort of life changing gains. The highest percentage wise is Shopify by a large margin. Bought 20 shares pre split at around 105 and selling at roughly 1700 a few years later. Nice little boost to the tfsa but cant quit my day job. 

 

Most money earned is BRK with about 60,000 usd in gains so far. Thanks warren

 

I think my excessive diversification is going to keep me from that until i learn options. 

 

 

[Spekulatius]

12 minutes ago, Jaygo said:

I have never really had any sort of life changing gains. The highest percentage wise is Shopify by a large margin. Bought 20 shares pre split at around 105 and selling at roughly 1700 a few years later. Nice little boost to the tfsa but cant quit my day job. 

 

Most money earned is BRK with about 60,000 usd in gains so far. Thanks warren

 

I think my excessive diversification is going to keep me from that until i learn options. 

 

 

Same here regarding concentration but I also sleep very well.

 

My best investment was LAACZ. Bought it in 2012 after screening for stocks with high share prices trading on OTC markets. My rationale was that stocks with high share prices were less likely to be crap and OTC stocks were most likely to be mispriced, but there were just too many of them to go through without and initial filter. the high share price was my initial filter. I did a fair bit of research on LAACZ and the owners back then and bought a ~10% position. Stock about doubled  until 2015 (~$2000/unit) and then just sat there for years. I started accumulating more in 2018 until 2020 and more than doubled the position over time, adding opportunistically here and there (the units were quite illiquid) because I noticed that fundamentals kept improving and while the unit price stagnated. On the 2020 March dump I got 2 units more around $1350 or so.

 

The buyout offer was for ~$10K in late 2021, so a 10x bagger for my 2012 units and 5x bagger for those I acquired later.

 

My only learning experience from this is that if you own something (or even after you sell a stock) keep tracking it, it likely will become interesting again and some point later. I often keep ignoring this lesson to this day though. It's one reason why I like to buy smaller positions in a stock that I find interesting and reasonably cheap, but don't really have the conviction for larger positions yet. As I own and track it, I might get to the point where I get the conviction to bump up the position later.

 

[Saluki]

Biggest percentagewise was Pabrai's first book, which I already had a copy of.  I was walking out of a used book store and I saw copy which was sitting on the clearance rack for $1.  I bought it and flipped it on Amazon a few weeks later and cleared about $100 after fees and postage. 

 

Biggest win that made a difference in net worth was my first condo in 2000, right before the real estate bubble.  It was a studio and it was selling for $70k, and I worked out that it was $100/month cheaper to buy in that building than to rent. The seller was a realtor who was retiring and had owned 6 units in different buildings for 20+ years and the price went nowhere, but was selling all of them. It was a few blocks from my job so the commute was perfect. I put 10% down and got a mortgage for the rest. I got a first time home owner credit from the city, and because I had only been at my firm for 4 months and had been a law student before that, my income was low enough to qualify for the credit and I got about $6k back. So I basically bought a piece of property for almost nothing down, like the old infomercials claim anyone can do. Three years later I sold it for $210 and cleared about $90k after fees and closing costs.  Because I lived in it for over 2 years, the gains were tax free   My only regret is not buying a bigger unit when it became available a few months later. I could have rented one and kept living in the bigger one. 

 

My law degree was also, in hindsight, a really good investment because it's still paying me every year, and grad school has gotten much more expensive over the past 20 years. 

 

There have been some terrible investments, but those were the good ones. 

 

 

[dipod]

Reading The Warren Buffett way was my first introduction to value investing.

Largest gain I remember was a position in Nokia calls during the game stop mania craze. Made a ton holding the position for < 48 hrs. Stock rose about 60% the next day after I bought the calls. Was watching like a hawk and sold off once trading halts started.

Biggest regret was selling off O&G calls I bought during the meltdown in 2020. Sold way too early. Would be a multibagger today.

Similar regrets with INTC and C calls middle of this year. Selling too early. A lesson I will at some point learn to hold tight if there's still value despite an initial steep rise in price and thesis confirmation.

[thepupil]

from a pure MOIC perspective, I think the below call option on APTS, $774 to $38,500 or 50x. I think that significantly overstates the profitability because I lost a few grand on the prior month's expirations, but it's still a cool line item.  I made more in the common, but the options juiced it really well and also prevented me from risking more money in APTS which had a more levered balance sheet than other REITs. In an alternative world where BX didn't buy them out, these would have been a good trade in terms of keeping loss minimized. 

 

 

I think LAACZ and Berkshire are biggest $$$ contributors over time...(though my primary residence probably eclipses them if you count that). 

 

I think my first investment (a speculative company that went to zero) which inspired me down path of value investing was probably the best in terms' of the more indirect wayh of answering the question. 

Edited December 11, 2023 by thepupil

[Red Lion]

All of my best investments have been in my own business. In 2019 I went “all in” and then some on a business venture that ended up returning about 100x pretax. 
 

The best overall was another advertising campaign that has returned 150x pretax and still isn’t done yet. Unfortunately this wasn’t a huge weighting, but still ended up providing a fantastic return without much out of pocket capital. 

[KPO]

Medicis Pharmacuetical. Purchased around 1996 and in 2012 it was sold to Valeant for $2.6B. I don’t have good records going back this far, but it was a 12-14X return as I recall.  The one that got away? MSFT bought in 1995 and sold after a relatively quick double…..

[Gregmal]

3 minutes ago, RedLion said:

All of my best investments have been in my own business. In 2019 I went “all in” and then some on a business venture that ended up returning about 100x pretax. 
 

The best overall was another advertising campaign that has returned 150x pretax and still isn’t done yet. Unfortunately this wasn’t a huge weighting, but still ended up providing a fantastic return without much out of pocket capital. 

Id definitely concur with this sorta thing. Even if I didnt know what you do, Id say in my own life, finding ventures that require niche skillset and basically my own instinctual elbow grease have produced absurd returns while being capital lite. Just gotta know where and how to plant those seeds. 

[Xerxes]

Aside some 3x-4x run of the mill, once in a blue moon, I don’t have any war stories to share. … yet

[Fly]

On 12/10/2023 at 2:54 PM, Malmqky said:

 

I have a few bitcoins held in a wallet on an old laptop of mine. Don't remember the credentials to access. Sad days.

 

Painful. Was this back in the old days running the bitcoin core wallet? search your computer for the wallet.dat file and if you find that you can copy it to a new installation and recover the coins.

[Thrifty3000]

I invested a bit over $200,000 in my side hustle starting in 2012 (which was nearly a third of my net worth at the time). I was able to unload it for a cool 8 figures in 2018. (Thank you everything bubble!) Like Viking mentioned above, I would have NEVER been able to invest that much had my wife and I not been so dang frugal in our 20’s (always trying to put one of our salaries in savings).

 

Also like Viking, my most impactful public equity W was loading up on Fairfax post-2020. It became my first ever seven figure gain on a public equity, which has been fun. And, despite having followed Fairfax since 2010, if not for this board I’m sure I wouldn’t have had the conviction to bet so big. 

[Xerxes]

Those of you with 7-figure in one name (an actual business). Remember the dogecoin millionaire.

 

At least you are owning really businesses, where the size of the investment is just a function of your comfort.
 

And not some crazy folktale coin.  
 

https://decrypt.co/153563/dogecoin-millionaire-bags-3-million-to-50000-dollars-has-not-lost-faith?amp=1

[Whensthepaintdry?]

In my early 20s I built a small rental for 90,000 it now makes 50,000 a year on abnb. That rental allowed me to invest in other real estate and free up all other income to invest in the market ever since.