DIY Investor Magazine
| August 2017
48
IN CONVERSATION WITH A DIY INVESTOR
– Q&A WITH THE WHEELIE DEALER
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN A DIY INVESTOR?
I started mucking around with stocks in the dotcom
boom days in late 1999 - exactly the wrong time to be
doing it! What a baptism of fire that was - I got lucky
with a few but lost some ridiculous amounts of money on
some very poor choices (thankfully I know a lot better
now!).
I made every single possible mistake, although I made
maybe one decent decision - I did at least diversify my
portfolio and bought lots of funds in a spread of things
like US stocks, Japanese stocks, tech funds (right at the
top of the boom), bond funds, health funds, and some
cash - that this was my saving grace, if I had not done
this I would probably have lost near 75% of my money;
in the event I probably lost about 35% in the low to 2003
- obviously still horrific.
I made one more good decision - rather than giving up
(there really is no better way to make money than by
investing in equities over time and compounding the
returns) as many of my mates did, I realised that a major
factor in my abysmal performance was that I was over
confident and didn’t have the foggiest idea what I was
doing. I then started to read about people like Warren
Buffet, Jim Slater, Ken Fisher, Peter Lynch, Ben Graham
etc and got a grip; I followed David Linton avidly for
his charting prowess and learnt so much from him and
other technical analysts.
I subscribe to Investors Chronicle which I love and I see
Shares Magazine which is a quality read; I subscribe to
ShareScope which is excellent and I recently upgraded
to SharePad as well - because I can access it using my
tablet. I am a big fan of Robbie Burns, the Naked Trader
- I like the way he mixes fundamentals with charts; he is
a genius at ‘cutting out the noise’ and the psychology
of investing - something I have put more emphasis on
in recent years and I have written a lot about how our
brains affect our investing performance.
I ‘retired’ 8 years ago at the ripe old age of 44 and spent
time refining my approach and reading aplenty, but as
a fairly inactive investor I had a lot of time on my hands
and got bored - so about 3 years ago I started doing my
Website
and I am pretty
active on Twitter as
@WheelieDealer
.
WHAT TYPE OF INVESTOR ARE YOU?
I’m an ‘investor’ rather than a ‘trader’ although of course
my ‘name’ is rather misleading! (hey, it had a nice ring to
it and I am a huge fan of Mike Brewer and Ed China).
I buy stocks which I think will rise over time, holding
them from a few months to many years; I still hold the
Framlington Health Unit Trust I bought back in 1999 - it
has been excellent and I like health as a theme going
forwards. I am remarkably patient - my default stance
is ‘do nothing’ (panicking into being a ‘forced seller‘is a
huge mistake).
Whatever I buy must fit within my portfolio and ‘make
sense’ in that context; I hold about 40 Stocks in my
‘Trading ISA’ - the ‘WD40’ and I have an ‘income
portfolio’ with 12 Stocks in it. I buy across the size
spectrum from FTSE100 right down to AIM shares
although I tend to stick above £50m market cap
I like to have a mix of sectors although I have got myself
rather over exposed to retail stocks – although, apart
from
French Connection (FCCN)
which is a pain, I am
very happy with the ones I hold.
I aim for a 10% return on my portfolio and a good
balance of risk and time/effort; I adopted this approach
when the demands of a full time job forced me
