Reblog: Some Common Mistakes by Investors


Over the last one year, I attended 3-4 fantastic value investing conferences. Many of the investors had spoken their heart out and many were not comfortable sharing their presentation publicly. Hence I have omitted the company and speaker names. But this compilation of mistakes of these investors could be helpful to both amateur and experienced investors.

Whenever I meet an experienced investor, I am more interested in their mistakes and not their success stories. I believe everyone investment philosophy should be as per their personality, so it’s not possible to follow someone else philosophy. But we can learn a lot from other’s mistakes.  According to Dhirendra Kumar of fund tracker Value Research, Prashant Jain of HDFC mutual fund did not manage funds differently from other fund managers. “He just kept it simple and committed lesser mistakes,”. Read this fantastic article by Shane Parrish on Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance to understand the importance of studying mistakes.

Here is the list of mistakes shared by investors:

Management

  • Overlooking obvious good companies because of some small wrong acts of management eg. High remuneration, preferential issues at lower price etc. Refusing to invest in micro and small cap with fantastic business model and growth because of some IGNORABLE wrong acts of management is one of the most common mistakes.

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