My Stock Investment Journey: 2013-2023

 

I'm not that young anymore.

I bought my first shares in the stock market back in mid 2006, not long after I started working.

So officially I've been in the stock market for almost 18 years. This sounds like I must be a very experienced investor, isn't it?

Even though I'm in and out of the stock market during this period of time, I think I have gained some experience but not so much compared to what I'd have hoped for.

In my early days of blogging, there was one blogger who just graduated from university and stepped into the stock market as a rookie.

After years of cultivation and perseverance, now he has become a successful and respectable investor & entrepreneur, with immense knowledge and experience in the stock market.

I may have started in front of him but I'm just languishing behind him by many streets now...

If you read my earlier post about My Stock Market Investment Journey, I divided my journey into 3 phases.

In summary,

Phase 1 from mid 2006 to mid 2009: busiest period with work, no strategy & discipline.

Phase 2 from mid 2009 to mid 2013: less busy at work but more interested in property investment. Start speculating in stock market.

Phase 3 from mid 2013 to now: start to invest with strategy and discipline.

Basically year 2006 to 2013 is like a waste of time to me. I wish I have the chance to learn proper way in stock market investment since the very beginning.

Anyway, after 2013, I wasted my time again from mid 2016 to mid 2019...

Nevertheless, I can't deny that those days might have given me some precious experiences to be able to invest the way I am investing now.

From mid 2013 onwards, definitely it's not bad until the end of 2023. I have no reason not to be happy with my effort.

I tracked and recorded all my transactions and gain/loss in actual value since 2006, but only since mid 2013 I started to record the gain/loss of my overall portfolio in percentage on monthly basis.

I started to share my monthly portfolio in this blog since Oct 2013, though I went missing in action from blogging in year 2018 & 2019.

For the past 11 years since mid 2013, my portfolio registered annual gain for 8 years while suffering loss for 3 years.

I made good start with positive gain in the first 3 years from 2013 to 2015. 

If not mistaken, I think most investors made good gains at that time as the stock market was generally good except for the blue chips.

In those early years, Tambun, Inari, Gtronic, Latitude, Geshen etc played a big part in my positive return.

Year 2015 was the best return year at 107%. Geshen was the main contributor with a 380% gain in share price in less than a year.

My portfolio suffered small loss of 3.2% in 2016, as it didn't recover from the 10% drop in the first month of 2016 led by Geshen, Inari, Hevea & Gtronic. It was saved from deeper loss by good gain in AWC though.

I was back into green in 2017. In that year Inari & KESM soared to the sky.

The worst year was 2018 with 29% loss while I was away from the stock market and didn't really take care of my portfolio.

The failure to sell KESM & Inari earlier made my portfolio suffered.

Fortunately for me, my portfolio turned green again in the following 3 years. I was back in the stock market in 2019 but I was too lazy to post anything in this blog.

Year 2019 was lifted by good gains from Frontken, PPHB, Notion & Prolexus.

Year 2020 was a special year as it was the start of Covid-19 pandemic. It was blood-bath in the first half but euphoria in the second half of the year.

I missed the party of gloves stocks totally, but was fortunate to pick up some good ones in mid 2020.

Karim's stocks SCIB & KPower were the star performers which doubled their share prices in less than 6 months time, followed by JHM & Jaks which also gained almost 50%.

Yes, Jaks & JHM. These two "J" stocks later fell and contributed to poor portfolio performance in 2021 & 2022.

As a result, my portfolio closed the challenging year of 2020 with a magnificent 95.4% gain.

January 2021 was the best time in my stock market investment so far, in which my portfolio gained 34.5% in one month alone.

Both SCIB and Genetec defied gravity and even JHM was advancing to RM2.50 (now 70sen).

However, the good time was short lived as the gain slowly evaporated to just 2.3% at the end of year 2021, affected by the fall from grace of SCIB and few bad decisions in Supermax & Tecfast (Fast).

The negative trend continued into year 2022 as my portfolio lost 16%. The main culprit was the massive fall of my tech-related stocks, such as MI, Gtronic, JHM & Krono.

Year 2023 saw the recovery of MI & Gtronic. Without other overly bad performer, my portfolio managed to advance 12.3% in this year.

I recorded all my gain/loss in every completed transactions & dividends received in actual value and I can appreciate the growth in my portfolio value over time.

Initially, I bought shares with value of only RM2-3k in each transaction and usually I invested around average RM5k in one single stock.

How I wish I started with RM100k. I might be a "millionaire" by now.

Last time I used to be "all-in" into stock market with almost zero cash but now as my portfolio grows, the value of each of my transactions becomes higher, and I turn more cautious and conservative.

I'm even thinking of putting part of my fund into stable dividend stocks.

Since 2013, I am not too active in buy/sell transaction, at least compared to previous "speculating" years.

Over the past 10.5 years, I have bought and then completely sold 46 stocks, with an average of  4-5 completed transaction per year.

Out of these 46 completed buy/sell deals, only 9 of them were at lost, which translates into winning rate of approximately 80%.

Of course this does not include those many losing stocks in my current portfolio.

I tend to keep losing stocks and sold when they crawl back to gain position. This is typical reluctance to admit loss, which is not a good trait to have in stock market investing.

Anyway, I do cut loss when my instinct tells me it's not worth waiting anymore.

Out of the 37 winning trades, 12 of them successfully achieved >100% in gain, and it doesn't include Scientex in my current portfolio.

Those stocks are HHGroup (HHRG), Tambun, Geshen, AWC, KESM, KPower (Reneuco), Notion, Frontken, Inari, Latitude (RKI), SCIB & Genetec.

Gtronic bought in 2013 was close at 98% gain.

The secret to gaining >100% is just the patience to hold a stock for longer term before it reaches target price and resist selling for short term gain.

Before year 2013 it's almost impossible for me to achieve more than 100% gain in a single stock as I tend to sell when the stock made <50% to quickly "lock in" the profit before it went down.

With clearer target price & better discipline in my phase 3 investment journey, I'm able to do that.

However, sometimes this patience work against me for example Hevea & Smetric-WA in which both went from >100% paper gain to loss.

MyNews and double "J" Jaks & JHM also dropped from close to 100% gain at one time to mediocre gain or loss.

Since 2013, I don't use technical analysis and don't speculate in the stock market. Nevertheless, I don't think I'm a true value investors as well.

I don't think a true value investors will invest in stocks like Jadi.

I try to look for growth stocks, which means I normally don't invest in big cap stocks like blue chips.

If you go through my previous stock selection, they are almost entirely small to mid cap stocks. 

Most of them are little known stocks at that time such as YOCB, Geshen, Latitiude, HHGroup etc. Even Inari when I first invested in it in 2013 was not very well-known.

From my experience in the past 10 years, I only need to successfully find 1-2 super growth stocks for my portfolio to register good gain in a year.

Nevertheless, I find it harder to find such growth stock nowadays. Perhaps the popularity of social medias & investment gurus now have made finding undervalued growth stocks more difficult.

From 2024 onward, will there be any change to my investment style, or phase 4 of my investment journey?

Lots of stocks went up substantially in 2023 and early 2024 and it seems like I missed all of them.

I think the most important change to do is just to force myself to spend more time in stock market investment.

As for the style of investing, may be I should not resist myself too much in buying higher PE stocks. The rest might stay more or less the same.

Avoiding high PE stocks has cost me quite a number of opportunities.

I guess my phase 4 might be the time I start to put half of my portfolio as dividends stocks.

That's all about my stock investment journey for the past 10 years. 

I'm glad that I'm not losing money in the stock market at least for now. 

However, the game hasn't end yet as long as I'm still in the stock market. Any wrong decisions or bad luck might bring me back to the starting line.

As my age and investment fund grow, I feel like protecting the fund is quite important.

My fund size is still not that big so I think it's better to concentrate on growth first. 

The stock market has made a good start in the first month of 2024. It seems like it will be the start of falling interest rate era in the US, which should be good to the stock market.

However, US indices are already at record high now. Will they have the momentum to continue to rise this year?

Personally I hope that foreign hot money will shift back to Malaysia and kick-start the stock market euphoria this year.