I’m never very good at talking about myself, but I feel I should introduce myself as you have taken the time to visit my blog, so firstly, thank you for stopping by.
I’m Karl, I’m currently in my 30s and I have been a very keen investor for many years. In my late teens I was studying business and accounting. Whilst I have always been grateful for the opportunities I have had and firmly believe education is very important. It just was not the path for me. I wanted to be out there running a business, not studying the subject. I thought, even if I fail, I’ll probably learn more than I would in the classroom.
So that’s exactly what I did, I setup my own business at 18. It was a web design company. I got off to a slow and rocky start, but eventually business started to flow in. After a year I partnered with another designer and we worked together. It went extremely well and we sold the business later for a nice profit.
With the money i’d made from the business sale, I started to think about investing. I had an appointment with the financial advisor at my bank. He suggested a mutual fund. I put some money into this in April 2000. Yep… you guessed it, right at the top of the big tech bubble. It didn’t go well. I probably would have had a hard time getting the timing any worse!
A few years later when the fund was close to break even, I cashed out, taking a slight loss. Though the loss was quite substantial when you factor in years of inflation. After looking closely, it was clear had it not been for the hefty management fees, i’d have made a profit. So essentially, I paid someone to lose money for me. Of course, there was nobody to blame but myself.
This made me want to learn to invest for myself, so over the years, I have learnt to trade stocks, ETFs, currencies and futures. Most of what I have learn has been from free material online.
I have made many mistakes investing, but each year I get older, I get that bit wiser, both when it comes to investing and life in general. This was the reason for the name of this site, WiseStockBuyer.
Despite all the years of experience I have now, my investing strategy is very simple. It is based on my belief that whatever is thrown at capitalism, it eventually sorts itself out and works well. Don’t get me wrong, the capitalist model is far from perfect, it has many problems, but i’ve never been able to come up with a better system.
I think one of the biggest issues with capitalism is greed. This greed creates bubbles. There have been too many bubbles to mention over the last century including the tech bubble I mentioned earlier. Unlike most investors, I love bubbles. They present opportunities.
We all know what happens to a bubble in the end, they burst! When bubbles burst, the world panics, the markets behave erratically. This is when I love to buy!
Buying during a major stock market panic is unnerving, as the majority of people are selling. Ask yourself one question.. How many of these panic sellers are losing? Probably most of them. They are sending the market down so you can buy it cheaply.
I was a big buyer of stocks and oil (via the ETF XES) shortly after Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. As you will no doubt be aware, this created the biggest stock market panic in my lifetime. Panic means opportunity. Buying at this time seemed the unnatural thing to do, as the world was selling. I kept all my emotions out of it and thought about things logically, and it made good financial sense.
I have learnt in the short to medium term, markets tend to move on human emotion, not fundamentals, this is what presents the opportunities. The human emotions panic and fear drag prices down so you can get in cheap, and later show a good profit.
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