Stock Stories
Hi friends!
On Potential Multibaggers, my paid Seeking Alpha service (get a 2-week free trial and 20% off here!), I asked my subscribers to share their stock stories. More than a dozen stories, and I selected three to share with you here.
The reason is that from all these stories, you can learn something, as you’ll see. I hope you enjoy them!
Francisco’s story
Many good things come with individual stock investing. One not usually talked about is how much you learn that extends beyond investing. Take Cloudflare, for instance.
In a meeting with a startup, the founder looking to add board members mentioned the name "Michelle Zatlyn.” She had Michelle's contact info. I was shocked. She wanted to hear opinions about inviting her. And I was the only one able to say something useful, thanks to my investing journey on Potential Multibaggers. I said:
She is a brilliant and sucessfull business woman, with entreprenourial spirit and she would be a top-notch addition to your board.
I did not say it, but I knew Michelle would probably be too busy, and as far as I know, she is not on that board.
Another customer was hoping to do some trials with LLMs. I guess most know that stands for Large Language Models. One concern was the investment needed to install GPUs on-prem, as they did not want to upload confidential information to the cloud.
I said:
Well, Cloudflare could be an option. They are in the cloud but privacy is one of their pilars. Also, they run at the edge so speed is not a problem. And they are cost-competitive with no egress fees. You could start a trial even for free with a Llama model, which was recently added to their catalog (by the way, thanks to whoever shared that blog post in Slack). Then if it works, you could move on prem knowing that the LLM solution works before investing.
(An interruption here from Kris: Slack refers to the Potential Multibaggers Slack channel we have. It’s a great way of communicating and sharing interesting information. Back to Francisco.)
Then I looked at the only developer in the meeting and said:
And they are super friendly to new developers. You should follow Matthew Prince on X (@eastdakota).
Valuable information again thanks to my stock investing journey with Potential Multibaggers. And I have many, many more such examples...
Talking to the director of a multi-billion plant in the steel industry, I said
Your company just started a buyback program
That started an interesting conversation.
I have told a friend working at a corporation that the small McAffee icon will probably say "Falcon" one day. (An interjection by Kris again: My paying subscribers all know that Falcon is Crowdstrike’s platform, but I wanted to add that here).
I have recommended friends to open an account at Nubank, calmly knowing Nubank is solid.
I have my kids now using Duolingo to practice Math for free. As a side note, I hope Duolingo will provide ACT practice tests. That would benefit my kids in their attempt to gain a scholarship and the stock price if Duolingo can show that their courses increase ACT scores. Imagine that!!! A huge driver of new users.
I have learned so many things, including how wrong I can be. I improved my ability to know when I don't know and gain knowledge from opposing views. I think I've improved my patience. Good things for professional and personal life.
Erwin’s Story
This story is about the first shares I ever bought, namely shares of Brewdog.
Now, you may immediately think: this is not right. Despite the multiple rumors about an IPO, Brewdog still hasn't had an IPO. Yet the story is true because I did not buy these shares through the stock market but through crowdfunding from Brewdog, through their "Equity for Punks" program. Therefore, I do not own these shares through a traditional broker account but through a Computershare account.
The next thing you may now be thinking: OK, another story about a first share that has been a trigger to become an investor, etc. Although this is true, that is not what the story is about. That would not be very original.
The real story is that it helped me incredibly as an investor to have a non-listed stock. After all, you don't have a share price that you can check every hour, day, or week, ... You don't have 20% declines in one day because the company grew YoY by 31% and this was a full 1% less than the expected 32%. Or a 20% increase in one day because the company grew YoY by 32% and yet this was the full 1% more than the expected 31%. You don't have analysts coming up with idiotic random price targets.
All you can do is watch how the company does. And drink, of course, uhm, I mean quality control :-) This makes it a tremendously easy stock to have in your portfolio and especially to keep. As long as the company is doing well, you have no reason to doubt it.
Many times, I have thought with violent price movements in other stocks: what if, as with Brewdog, I would not see a price? Would I then have doubts about the company now or not? You can guess for yourself what the answer usually is.
In a way, it is also a very pure form of investing. You invest money in a company you believe in for the long term. I haven't even looked into how I could sell these shares yet. There are no shorts, no turbos, no noise, ... . And just because it's so pure, it's also easy to learn from it. Your learning experience is not disturbed by noise.
I have had Brewdog shares for more than 5 years and I have no idea how much they are worth. I do know that the company is a lot bigger than 5 years ago and that it continues to grow. And that I, therefore, like to keep them in my portfolio.
Ryan R
March 2020 brought some life-changing experiences for all of us, whether we were fully prepared for them or not.
I remember vividly leaving my classroom (I'm a high school social studies teacher) and taking a few papers home to grade over the St. Patrick's Day weekend, thinking I'd be back in a few weeks. Little did I know my bedroom would be transformed into my new classroom for the next year, equipped with a card table, this weird new thing called Zoom, and a lot of Lysol wipes.
I had always been interested in stocks, and while all this was going on I vividly remember seeing red everyday on the news when reporting on the market. For a few days, notifications on my phone popped up about the markets tripping a stop trading alert because they fell too far too fast. Apparently, nobody would ever go on a cruise again, and Apple was a company going bankrupt. Who knew?
Given my newfound time between teaching Zoom classes and wiping off my groceries, I threw myself into the world of the markets, researching terminology, companies, tax loss harvesting, and what the best opportunities were.
Somehow, I came across a little company called Celsius Holdings, at $1.29 a share (post-split price). I figured I could drop $4,000 on it and see how this worked. I liked the marketing of the product, the financials looked good, and they had just gotten a distribution agreement with Target. I also knew the story of Monster and it seemed like they had a decent runway.
Then, behold, by the end of that summer, it was trading for $5, and I felt like a genius. Look at this guy who is brand new to stocks. I had almost a 400% gain over a few months. I sold, took my gain, and thought: “This is easy- why does everyone make such a big deal about this?”
Oh, rookie Ryan, how I wish I could go back and teach you. I'm getting sick to my stomach writing this! At the close of the market today, I would have had $161,209 if I just didn't do anything. Instead, it's hard not to look at it as a loss. But my vulnerability in writing this is to show that the market- much like mother nature- can check our egos fast and remind us that we aren't in charge.
When I started in this community, Kris shared wise words that stick with me to this day. Every day in life, we are expected to do something and criticized when we don't take action. The market is so counterintuitive to our nature because often the best thing we can do is nothing. With 24/7 media, tweets, price targets, etc. it feels weird not to do anything. Looking back, that's exactly what I should have done.
So, cheers to Kris and this community for helping me along my investment journey.
Fast-forward to 2023. I now live in Colorado, am back to teaching in person, and have a second child, but I am still $161,209 less rich. But the lessons I have learned from it are priceless.
And most ironic of all, I hate drinking Celsius. :-)
Conclusion
These are just three of the many valuable stories I got from Potential Multibagger subscribers.
What’s your story? You’d do us all a favor if you shared it in the comments! ↓
In the meantime, keep growing!
P.S. Don’t forget about that 2-week free trial and 20% discount to check out Potential Multibaggers.
P.P.S.: Sometimes people are afraid of the 2-week free trial because they have been locked in by other sites. Potential Multibaggers can be easily canceled with just a few clicks. So, why not try it out and read 100s of articles for free?