RE:35 = 2In a way, making these posts on the forum is like journaling to oneself, a constant reminder of why we invest and why to stay the course, just that posting on a forum is like sharing your self reflection. Personally, I appreciate that you share your research on the forum and I have learned a lot from your perspective on stocks. I'm a follower.
If you're interested, here's my story. I'm in my late 20s and I started investing for the first time at the peak of the COVID craze in 2021 when every stock seemed to go up. I went all in and I lost 70% of my portfolio quickly in the span of a year. Luckily, I hadn't put too much into the market at the time. I bought some random stocks that I had no idea about and just held foolishly for over a year, thinking that they will go up one day. In the end, it was all speculative stocks with no positive cash flow that tanked when the interest rates started to go up and sentiment worsened. I was shooting myself in the leg.
I was in a toxic mindset of "invest what you're willing to lose 100% and see what happens." But when my portfolio hit the bottom in Dec 2022, I decided to take the small losses and sold out of everything and changed my investing mindset to "invest to make returns." As crazy as it sounds, I was in the market only for a dopamine rush, not for profit. Seeing anything less than a 20% intraday move was boring for me. Maybe because my total contributions were quite low, I felt I can just gamble it all away for fun. I'm fortunate to have never tried options trading.
Luckily, at the bottom in Dec 2022, i read some random post on Peter Lynch that said invest in what you know. I didn't understand PE ratio or anything like that, but I still bought stocks of companies whose services I use often, like meta, amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Costco and others, and held all till now, dollar cost averaging on the way up. Seeing my portfolio do amazing, I was more motivated to start learning about stocks.
In July 2023, I stumbled upon the stock Hammond power solutions, which had a crazy return last few years even at the time. The stock price was around 45$. I compared my returns to those of HPS, which had been almost 700% last few years, and I figured the big money was to be made in small cap stocks with growing cash flow in a sector with good headwinds. Even during the COVID crash, they barely had a pullback. Ever since then, they've been growing exponentially year after year. So in July 2023, I decided to buy some shares at 50$, and shortly after they went up to 60$ range. A few weeks later, there was a decent drop back to the 50$ range, then my emotions kicked in. I figured, "a stock that's up 1000% last few years just had a big red day... I should probably lock in my 10% gain, there's no way this stock can keep doing what it's doing." Today, 6 months later, the stock has doubled again at 118$ a share.
Because of this stock, I became very interested in small caps, and found this website after a quick Google search. I was looking for a company in a growing sector with good headwinds and growing cash flows. I noticed my best performing stocks were all ones with consistently improving cash flow. I didn't want any part of speculative, unprofitable stocks that had to prove themselves, the downside is tremendous. I wanted low volume, under the radar stocks with solid track record and management because that's how I think big money is made. A company that cares about making money for everyone and not constantly diluting the shareholder.
That's when I found the stock DRX, which fit every criteria if what I wanted, so I piled into it at 4$ in August 2023. Now, the stock has more than doubled, but I'm not going to make the same mistake as with HPS and leave the gains on the table. Until the industry shows it's in decline or the management deteriorates, I will continue to hold that stock.
Through that DRX stock forum, I found lifeisgood, a great investor that is kind enough to share his wisdom to us. I don't even know why I'm typing all this stuff, I guess I'm journaling to myself. Now I'm piling into Akita.
To the 5 people or less that read this far, hope you found my random text insightful. Cheers!
P.S. nice move on Akita today