Dear Partners, Friends, Intelligent Investors,
In 2021 I spent an entire year almost completely alone to set up our investment “vehicle” in the best profitable way possible. Being so reclusive and withdrawn I found the time to study a lot and thinking about future investments and companies to buy. As a consequence, all this pondering lead to a period of reflection about Value Investing, my own way of applying the Buffett and Graham principles and what have been my conclusions so far about investing.
A book came out from this adventurous journey called “The Joy of Investing”. I didn’t know anything about the existence of a book “The Joy of compounding” by Gautam Baid, an indian value investor himself. In fact only one year later in Zurich Guy Spier gifted me a copy that I immediately read on my train from Zurich to Milan.
My “Joy of investing” yet is very peculiar. The subtitle is a bit enigmatic: “Sometimes the investor is so wrong he is right”. The solution to this enigma is inside the book and like the book itself is easy: “Don’t be afraid to fail, but always ask yourself where and if you may be wrong”. Only with this humility you’ll find sometimes, but not all the times, that you were so wrong you were right.
In fact, was Amazon a good buy 20 or more years ago? Objectionable at the time if you follow common evaluation standards. And how about buying bitcoins for few bucks 15 years ago? How long you would have been ready to be so wrong to buy and hold them, and then so right to sell them at 50,000 dollars each?
Even our beloved Berkshire was not the same Berkshire we know today back in the 70s or 80s. I can keep going on and on and on. Just to show you that the hindsight vision can teach us how hard is the job of the professional investor or money manager. In the book you’ll find my little story, examples of “real life” on the job and considerations on how to think to position yourself better if you want to start to become one.
It was written for myself, probably thinking about my teenager son and the first stocks he bought and why and if, when and how, to continue. It was written to remind me of some lessons learnt and some easy basic principles that are very easy and very harmful to forget, once you set out and proceed through the paths to uncommon wealth through common stocks. It’s a very very hard path. The winners’ circle is very very limited and only 27 of 1,257 funds had 12-month gains as of April 2023 (WSJ “Investing Monthly” Journal Report, April 10 2023).
Therefore the book was not meant to be published, and I tried at first to decline the courtesy of the proposal of the present publisher. Then I changed my mind and I thought that a man struggling with joy and sincere passion upon a subject if he is willing to share his thoughts, successes and mistakes can be a good teacher anyhow. And for everyone. Newbie or seasoned, expert or young student. Professional or not. But only if ready, always with an open mind, to learn, to think and to grow. I hope you can achieve those three habits reading my book and subsequently experience the “joy of investing”.
Sincerely,
Marco Turco
You can purchase the book “The Joy of Investing” on marcoturco.com
Parsonsporch.com
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And many other websites through the internet