107 - Investing Goals for 2021

Mental Models discussed in this podcast:

• Goals and Habits
• Concentration vs Diversification
• Signal vs Noise

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Twitter Handle: @TreyHenninger

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Show Outline

The full show notes for this episode are available at https://www.diyinvesting.org/Episode107

2021 Investing Goals

• Identify 2 new companies worthy of holding a 20% position in my portfolio
  • Actually, build those new 10-20% positions by selling out of 2 of my current holdings. (I have already identified which ones to sell)
• Become more comfortable with high levels of concentration.
  • My current largest holding is 35% of my portfolio. It's grown to this size from 20% and if all goes as I expect, it will likely continue to grow as a percentage of the portfolio. I need to become comfortable with 50% of my portfolio in a single stock if that company earns it through business performance. 
  • I may also sell 2 of my current positions before I have found the two new positions. Consequently, I need to tolerate holding less than 5 stocks for part of the year.
• Earn a 20% annual return for the year 2021.
  • I earned a return of 22% in 2020, beating the S&P 500 by 3.7%. 
    • Read my full annual letter here. 
  • I believe I can match or exceed that return again this year.
  • My discount rate is 10%, but that is used solely for the fundamental analysis portion of my stock analysis. With the current setup of my portfolio companies, I am often seeking 10% of the cash flows of the business, and an additional 10%+ from multiple expansion.
  • I am optimistic that I can achieve this rate of return and perhaps substantially exceed it due to the types of companies I currently hold. We'll see how that comes to fruition.
  • This is clearly an inferior goal as it is results based instead of process-based. I'm simply documenting it s that I have it as a reminder.

2021 Business Goals

• Pass the Series 65 Exam
  • Needed to become a Registered Investment Advisor
  • Will allow me to take on clients interested in me managing their portfolio.
  • If you'd like information about this and are perhaps interested in joining a waitlist, you can reach out for my information at my email: trey [at] diyinvesting.org
• Marketing Goals:
  • 5,000 Twitter Followers (Currently just over 2k)
  • 1,000 YouTube Subscribers (Currently just over 300)
  • At least 1 outside investing client
• Useful research goals:
  • Screen X number of companies this year (Say 100)
  • Write-up 12 companies this year
  • Read a 10k a day or a 10k a week, etc...

Goals I will no longer pursue

It used to be my goal during 2020 to move to only checking stock prices once a week. 

Going forward, I will no longer have that as a goal. I have found that my focus on illiquid stocks means that I'm often monitoring stocks frequently because it takes a long time to build a stock position. If I had completed that prior goal, my results would have been worse.  

Summary:

In this episode, I outline my top investing goals for the new year. I aim to identify 2 new companies worth buying and my goal is to attain a 20%+ annual return for 2021. I also cover process-based goals relating to how to go about investing research. Finally, I would like to pass the Series 65 exam so that I can begin managing money for outside clients.