On 20 baggers. Well, I'm still trying to learn. Imo though, this question and response from the fool is not right:
"The question is: How could you have found it back then?
Finding great returns
Well, it would have been extremely difficult, had you not been intentionally trying to unearth the next small-cap winner."
In my experience trying to intentionally unearth a 20-bagger is a mug's game. Waste of time because the likelihood is so small.
And as we on the thread have discussed on a previous Saturday, "finding great returns" is only part of the story. The issue (for me anyway) is, can you or would you or did you put enough money into the stock to make a really big, significant, life-changing amount of money from the huge rise? Can a normal person hold on through the vicissitudes to do this? The answer, imo is: for normal people, no. For somebody with unwavering, almost-religious faith, or someone with great inside information, maybe yes. (I'm reminded of the family that bought a bunch of Yahoo stock (who were not experienced investors apparently) at the beginning and held and held and just held to multimillions. They were pointed out by the media at the stockholders meetings in their front-row seats. It is that rare.)
I'm giving my opinion here based on my experience and my personality. Others may differ.
I suspect I have more 20-baggers than anyone else here. Not because I'm smarter/more cleaver or anything like that. Rather because I hold more positions and so give myself more chances and maybe more time for such a stock to work out. I can do this because I'm not gobsmacked with such a stock every trading day. That is, if I were to put say $60k into a stock and it started to go up 3x, 5x, 10x, 15x,20x... somewhere along the line it'd drop or rise suddenly, and I'd become very aware of the stock in my portfolio and how it's affecting my portfolio's performance. And I'd want to make a decision. Like sell. Maybe convince myself that a "normal" person ought to be prudent and trim an outsize position. Especially we'd be talking big bucks at this point (big to me anyway).
So for me, I'm initially in for very small $$, and the consequence of being in for the ride with only a few dollars is that is that the climb is almost surreptitious. I maybe can make it to the end, and at the end I'm "okay" --- every $ helps, but there's no huge, lifestyle-altering monies to be had from it. (Of course it's good to have any 20-bagger -g-)
For an example, Tesoro (TSO) is a typical (for me) one where I'm okay but the dollars don't really stand out (the stock being a small part of a well-diversfied portfolio). I had to go back in my notes to confirm that it's about a 20-bagger:
Message 17525703
Message 17801638
Again just my experience. And of course, I've been wrong many, many times with many, many stocks. |
