50 grand dollar mistakes turned out to be a gold mine!!

How mistakes became learning opportunities:  

1. Respect the market, learn from the greats, pay attention to the analysts but be careful in reading between the lines:

1. Common Stocks, Uncommon Profits: no need to chase silo stocks, look for good companies which you use on a daily basis, if you like their product, there is a good chance the stock is going to do better in the long term. Buy with Margin of Safety. 

2. Tap into Great Investors: See what other great investors are buying in this category, research and analyze them as Homework. you will come out stronger

3. Never buy Bad Management: DCHL stock: bad management(later realized) in spite of a good brand like newspaper, book store, IPL (Deccan Chargers)

1. learning: never invest in bad management, look for signs of performance and integrity 

4. Respect Mr. Market, Market has lots of swings: buy with conviction and solid foundations

1. Buying VIAC, Discover Bank, Capital One and many others from the lows and selling them based on the quarter earnings was not good. Should have paused and understood the earnings report better

5. Headlines of Stocks earnings could be deceiving, read carefully

• learning: read 10Q better especially for bank stocks as they provisions losses upfront and it might disguise an opportunity depending on the quality of the bank

2. Compounding works:

1. Play to your core competency: Build your competency and you will come out as a winner, compounding really works

2. Research about the company with better SEC tools: spend considerable amount of time reading books, studying Warren Buffett/Charlie Munger, Mohnish Pabrai, Guy Spier, understanding financial statements, 10k, 10Qs 

3. Cash is King, Being Lazy is good a lot of times, Avoid Impulse, Use your resources

1. Not sitting on my ass: especially when we don't know how we will use the cash generated!

1. Amazon: classic example, kept for for 10+ years and look at the returns

2. Covid: sold in 1950 and then the stock turns to 3300

2. A lot of times sitting with cash is so useful

1. Covid 19: March 17 - April 10 was a golden period, had i not had the cash, it would have been impossible to get those opportunities

3. Avoid Impulsive purchases and Recheck your transactions: Mistake with Options buy due to Robinhood intuitive interface and impulsive buy

1. loss of 5 grand

2. Learning: Roll back a mistake asap

4. Use your resources: Banks can waive wire fees, so work with them as allies, Read 13 f filings from great investors

4. Friction is good

1. Check your transactions, especially default settings: Wealthfront - How a wrong characterization of transfer pumped in 200k+ in a stock account, which led to 50k+ loss.

2. Learn your craft and practice if you want to play the long game: Depending on others for your finances can be sometimes really bad.

1. leanings: 

1. verify your transfers, read the defaults

2. It's good to roll back mistakes as fast as possible [in my case i did mail wealth-front, but the ship has sailed and it takes 4-5 days to cancel] and by the time losses were increasing and i let it be there for some time with market flip flops

3. glad i sold all of them, moved money to RobinHood for buying actual stocks. [changed the landscape

4. Robinhood is crazy with minimal friction to buy/sell, so be careful especially with options. <Friction in dealing with money is good>

   
   

Please share your experiences in stock markets, would love to learn on things NOT to do 🙏🙏