There is No Perfect Strategy and Many Angles of Attack...Always Be Probing and Honing

I have had a fantastic weekend of playing and watching golf.

This weekend was The La Jolla member guest and my good friend Peter invited me back for a second run at their ‘Jewel’. My handicap is 7 and I shot an 83 and 86 which was good enough for middle of the pack and many lost bets. Golf, like trading and investing will find your weakness. This weekend it was glaring that no matter how good or bad my swing gets, if I do not improve my green side play, I will never get to a next level of satisfaction playing the game.

I am going to dedicate all my ‘golf time’ over the next year to improving that part so that the game gets more enjoyable.

As for watching golf…wow. I am blown away at the level of play I am seeing at the professional golf level. I was joking with Max’s friends that we will see 800 yard Par 5’s in the next twenty years. I can imagine Johnny Miller commenting on 480 yard drives and 320 yard 4 iron approach shots.

The robots have taught the humans how to maximize distance through ‘angle of attack‘ (with the benefit of constantly improving technology).

So what the hell does any of this golf stuff have to do with my investing?

To be a great golfer you have to master so many physical things and than overcome all the mental nightmares. In the end, it is you against the course.

To invest well and even great, you only have to master one strategy. I will leave the mental part alone for the time being.

I have chosen trend following…or maybe it chose me.

It works for me.

I have gleaned from thousands of other trend followers over the years to come up with something that works for me. It does not work all the time because no strategy works all the time.

I have an angle of attack that has allowed me to catch major moves in startups and high growth (momentum) stocks. I can’t ever perfectly explain it because in the end, my domain expertise and risk profile is different than every one else’s. This is what continues to excite and fascinate me about investing and trading.

While it is the founders and the teams they build that create most of the value in early stage investing success, it is their angle of attack (feature set, timing, cap table construction) that create the angle of attack that can lead to breakaway success.

PS …

I write every day to hone my own skills, put ideas out there that sometimes get accepted and many times ridiculed.

The biggest risk of me sharing after keeping this public blog so long is that people do follow me. I hate when my ideas are completely wrong. Like broken telephone, my ideas get shared and inevitably people lose money. Nobody comes to my blog and takes every single idea I share, so I get cherry picked and some people will just pick what turns out to be my worst idea/s. I know because I get the emails.

I urge people to take my ideas in a basket form, but I do try and take the time to answer emails, especially when it comes to helping people deal with the inevitable losses from my bad ideas.

The great news has been this boom has bailed me and my readers out of a lot of mistakes. That won’t last forever.

This journal is mostly for me, so I am trying to be responsible. I urge everyone in this community to please take some responsibility for following me. I share what I am doing, not what you should do.

I have said it thousands of times here on this blog that everyone that wants to invest successfully needs to keep a journal. It is the ONLY thing, other than a great spouse and kids that can keep you honest over time.

Have a great week.