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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Damián who wrote (27053)	1/18/2026 11:20:56 AM
From: Kirk ©	1 Recommendation Recommended By Return to Sender Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27223

Welcome to the group. Great questions. I'll try a quick reply and should have more time later in the week. What has been your worst investment mistake, why and what warning sign did you ignore before it happened? Not taking my cost basis out of a telecom fund I bought in the early 90s when it soared like 10x by 2000. I thought a mutual fund was "diversified enough" and "run by experts" that they would have taken some profits to protect the gains. WRONG. It fell back to a bit lower than my cost basis. If you were starting from scratch today, what would you NOT learn or continue to learn? I would follow my advice to start with 80% in a few index funds such as the Total US stock market fund and a Total International fund in maybe 80:20 ratio and then use the 20% to "explore" ways to try and beat buying and holding with annual rebalancing of those two funds. If you want to get more funds, I offer a free sample of my newsletter where I give names and weightings for 80:20 & 50:50, aggressive & conservative, portfolios made of index funds for the 80% I recommend you buy and hold but for annual rebalancing. If you could only keep ONE investment rule for the rest of your life, what would it be? Understand compounding and the effects of taxes on frequent trading in taxable accounts. To what extent do you know if a news item truly matters to your investment style? Generally if "everyone" and especially CNBC's Jim Cramer "knows that this is true" then take it with a grain of salt. There is a reason Cramer hasn't published his annual returns for his portfolio in years. Where do you reccomend to learn to invest, finance, etc...?? Learn to use Excel and calculate your annual return for your investments and adjust for new money added or taken out. If you can't match or beat index funds, then do something fun with the time or get help. Any apps, websites, tools recommendations?? I haven't updated this in years as Amazon changes links and editions often and I hardly make anything on commissions these days but there is a good list of books here to get at the library or buy for your own library. Reading List - KirkLindstrom.com

To: Damián who wrote (27053)	1/18/2026 11:36:54 AM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27223

Fun - I'll give it a try...... What has been your worst investment mistake, why and what warning sign did you ignore before it happened? I'm not good at declaring things absolute worst and absolute best, so I'll list a few mistakes. 1.A common mistake among investing newbies is the view that the current big "stock winners" are too expensive and since they're well followed they won't work for you, so the best approach (the newbie thinks) is to research small cap underfollowed unknown companies in an effort to find the next Google or Amazon before it has become mainstream and expensive. This approach forces you to invest in crummy small cap loser stocks / companies, and not own the big winners such as GOOG and AMZN. Of course your small cap picks (which you own) end up sucking, and the large cap winners (which you don't own) continue to do well. What to do? When you start out buy a basket of winners (AMZN, GOOG, MSFT, etc.) and then when you discover what you think is your small cap superstar, sell some of the winner and put it into your small cap superstar. See which does better. 2.Not selling winners because I don't want to pay capital gains tax. Sell them when they're way up, and pay the tax. There's a good chance that within the next 12-24 months they'll be well below where you sold, and you can buy them back cheaper. 3.On the other hand, if a stock has done really well, and seem like it still has a great future, just let it run. Don't sell. Compounding is a wonderful thing. 4. Invest in companies that you think two or three years from now will look better than they look right now. That change in investor senitment (if it comes true) will result in multiple expansion, which is the stock going up for no reason other than investors suddenly like it more than they did a year ago. If you were starting from scratch today, what would you NOT learn or continue to learn? Learn? What is this learn? If you could only keep ONE investment rule for the rest of your life, what would it be? Own blue chip high growth winners. To what extent do you know if a news item truly matters to your investment style? Huh? The stock price matters, and the news will be reflected in the stock price faster than you can trade. I don't have an "investment style". I buy stocks that I think will go up. Is that a 'style'? Where do you reccomend to learn to invest, finance, etc...?? It takes years to get comfortable investing in individual stocks, and even then you are just comfortable, you're still unlikely to be very good. Good luck! Any apps, websites, tools recommendations?? Seeking Alpha is good for reading conference call transcripts.