Become a Member

10bagger wins the prize! 10bagger wins the prize!

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, December 10, 2007

OK, so that headline sounds pretty odd for those of you (which is most of you, actually) who don’t also participate over at the Stock Gumshoe Forum.

I offered a prize for the best posting on the forum last week, as I’ve done a few times over the last six months or so, and this time around it was intrepid participant 10bagger who won the prize ($100 cash).

The prize is on its merry way to him, but I wanted to share this information with everyone because I think we can learn a lot from what 10bagger did in his post that won him the appreciation of his fellow forum participants (they chose the prizewinner, not me):

He actually did some research.

Really — the real stuff, not just reading published materials. He actually sent company management an email with some specific questions, and got answers that he shared with everyone.

So, I have no idea if the company he was researching is any good (Grand Portage, FYI, I’ve never heard of them and have no opinion about the company). And I don’t want to overemphasize what he did — he didn’t invent email, of course, or diligence.

But he did make much more of an effort to learn about his company than I see many people making. His prize-winning post is here, if you want to check it out, and it’s part of a long series of writeups he did about this little company that he proposed as a “20 bagger” months ago. He has since backed off of the idea of really pushing his own stock ideas, since he has noticed that this is an emotionally charged thing to do if your idea happens to not perform as expected, but I hope he’ll continue to participate and throw out interesting ideas to the rest of us, and share the results of his due diligence efforts.

I know that many of us are sometimes tempted by microcap and other small, risky investments that are outside our area of expertise (in my case, I’d single out mining stocks), and, especially when we go into these uncharted waters, it can’t hurt to be as informed as possible.

And as 10bagger’s experience illustrates, you can often get to the CEOs or other higher-ups of these tiny companies via phone or email and get their answers to your questions (whether or not they answer well or honestly, that I can’t tell you).

So … one more ‘ol fashioned way to learn more about a company — ask them some questions. Crazy, huh?

Thanks to 10bagger, and to the other very active participants on the forum who help sleuth out teaser ads, recommend stock ideas to each other, or provide opinions about the various newsletters and services they subscribe to (and womanwithportfolio — who has her own really interesting website, too — was a very close second, by the way).

And actually — a bit of an update here — I’m embarrassed to say that I just went back and double-checked, on prodding from some readers — and I realized that it should have been a tie. Sorry to womanwithportfolio, who will now also win a prize. Her excellent post that was selected by forum participants is here, if you want to check that out — she sniffs out the five teaser companies from an ad touting China’s huge upcoming investments in pollution control and similar technologies.

I know there are lots of folks out there who hate discussion forums and message boards, but I think even many of you in that camp might appreciate the one we’ve got going here at the Gumshoe — no personal attacks, no spam, lots of helpful posters, and, every now and then, some great ideas. (If you do decide to participate, which is free and can be anonymous, please help us keep it clean, friendly, and helpful).

Happy investing, everyone.

Are you getting our free Daily Update
"reveal" emails? If not,
just click here...


guest

12345

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

2 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Jerry
Guest
Jerry
December 13, 2007 3:30 pm

I really like your site and have only one concern: When you list stocks such as MKL that sell for $480. plus, it leaves the average investor pondering how they could possibly have any significant position in such an expensive stock. I think there should be some empathy for the small guy out here. Thanks.

Add a Topic
5971
One Guy
Guest
One Guy
December 13, 2007 4:40 pm

Jerry, I think you need to wrap your head around the fact that the dollar price of the stock means almost nothing. When my stock portfolio was much smaller many years ago, my first purchase of Markel was three shares at something like $230. I like making small purchases to ease into positions.

There’s nothing wrong with buying one share of a stock, assuming the brokerage fees and commissions don’t eat up more than 1 or 2% of your investment (that’s just a general rule of thumb I like). And don’t feel like you have to make round purchases in 100 share lots of anything — I often buy odd lots of stock, 53 shares here, 118 shares there, etc., the amount you invest is important, the amount that each share costs is unimportant (except for the fact that you want it to cost less than it’s worth, of course).

And I think there’s no difference between a $5 stock and a $500 stock, it’s just that you might have to buy one share instead of 100 shares. Unless you’re trying to do something more active like hedge with options, which is almost always a losing strategy for small positions under a couple thousand dollars, the number of shares you own doesn’t matter.

And everyone’s circumstances and preferences are different, but I’m inclined to think that if you can’t buy a single share of a $500 stock, then it probably makes more sense to let your money build up in a good mutual fund for a while before you dabble in individual stocks too much.

Berkshire Hathaway, whose cheapest shares cost close to $5,000, is probably the one exception — that’s the only desirable stock I know of that you can’t get at least one share of for under $1000, which is a decent opening position size for a small investor.

Other than Berkshire in nosebleed territory you’ve got Seaboard, a few small banks, and I think that’s it for shares that are priced over $1000 … though Washington Post, CME, Google and White Mountains Insurance and even Markel could very well get there before too long.

When you talk about a “significant” position, the only number that matters is the dollar amount you have invested, not the number of shares that represents. I’d much rather have a dozen shares of Google than 300 shares of Dell right now.

Thanks for the comment.

Add a Topic
5971
Add a Topic
5971
Add a Topic
879

We use cookies on this site to enhance your user experience. By clicking any link on this page you are giving your consent for us to set cookies.

More Info  
32
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x