Why should you be ? The past two years have been some of my most amazing in so many ways, most specifically the number of businesses I’ve been a part of and the amount of growth I have experienced. And Speaking of growth, so has my portfolio and I know yours too…
One thing that has occasionally been on my mind has been whether (and how often) to adjust my share valuations page. Man oh man are there some really intelligent people in this industry and it has been a privilege working with most (special shoutout @JordsNel on twitter). The amount and quality of share analysis has just blown me away!!
But to update or not? Well most probably by the end of this year I will update most valuations but up to now I really haven’t been too worried for the following foundational reason:
“We’re looooong term remember?”
This has really been a driving force to not touch anything. The share criteria we have learnt and apply is key, instrumental, a holy grail if you may, for deciding what shares to buy. Especially initially.
After that you are a shareholder. It is your business. You are the boss and should concern yourself largely with the task of managing your investments and making sure that you perform all the activities around being a responsible shareholder. This entails reading SENS announcements, attending AGMs, asking uncomfortable questions at the AGM, engaging with other shareholders and improving your understanding of the business. Ideally this is a journey of many Results>>Analysis>>AGM cycles that have nothing to do with buying or selling shares but collecting dividends and learning more about your great business.
But won’t you miss new opportunities??
You most certainly will, and that is 100% ok. Remember, at the beginning, the journey was never about taking advantage of every opportunity but rather of taking the ones available to give you a more than acceptable return over the next 10 years. 3 years in we have barely scratched the surface when it comes to the returns from the companies we had identified then. If anything our position size should easily have multiplied many fold because many of those companies have really just churned and churned results while the market continued to not show them love (hey Lewis… wink).
So the work of adding a new share shouldn’t solely be seen as an exercise of adding one more share that meets the criteria, but rather more like that of adding a new child to the family. The idea wasn’t that you spend your time updating spreadsheets, but rather that you get your foot in and then never get out unnecessarily.
The last article I wrote had more gems than I possibly could ever share. So it wasn’t silence really. With that article alone I have grown many folds and I can only hope you do too. In a twist of words, my lips weren’t moving but I was saying sooo much. Sit on your hands!
