You don’t get better at investing without comparing your process with outcomes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the point of this blog. Currently, I view it as an investment journal. But, I wanted to accomplish a three things when I started:

1. Put my investment theses in writing. Compare the thought at the time of writing with the outcome (what was right, what did I miss)
2. Write down themes or ideas I talk about with friends…that end up being “lost” conversation because we never wrote it down
3. Have fun. Become a better investor. Become a better writer. Hopefully let others share in the outcomes.

In order to hone in on number one and number three, I am going to track performance of stocks I have written about on this blog with their performance against the Russell 3000. Why the R3k? Because I do some big names, some large names. Rarely anything international, and that’s my personal benchmark of what I would otherwise invest in.

If, overtime, I see that I am consistently underperforming, I’ll re-examine the process.

If I am doing well, I’ll examine which ideas seem to perform the best and why.

A few things to mention:

• Unless recommend closing a position specifically, the position runs on
• Equal-weighted since I’m not posting my full portfolio and also not writing about why I like one idea over another (but this may change in the future)
• Using total return so there may be differences in price change vs. total return if there are big dividends
• If I write about something twice, I assume that’s buying it twice, obviously excluding earnings recaps or anything like that. The rationale here is I’ve moved away from earnings recaps and when I write about something twice, its more akin to doubling down.
• Competitive strategy series posts are excluded (unless I say the stock looks cheap in the specific post) because the point of those posts is to examine business strategy as opposed to the stocks themselves being cheap
• Guest posts are excluded so a very timely cruise stock buy in March 2020 is not in the results
• Other exclusions may apply, such as some macro calls because it is too hard to track. For example, I noted at the end of 2018 that I was doubtful rates would rise meaningfully and bonds make sense if there was a market sell-off (as rates would likely move lower). That was a contrarian and a correct call, but is not included.

Over time, I hope to advance the write-ups I do in many ways. I also want to advance the tracker, but it won’t be in the near term. In the future, I want to show the portfolio. So, for example, future stock posts will say, “ok, I’m going to buy this name I like, so therefore I am selling xyz…”

But that’s for another day.

Head over HERE for the performance tracker. Or click the menu header above at the top of the site and click Performance Tracking.