Security Selection

In one of the first few posts of this blog, I highlighted the superiority of "Asset Allocation" compared to "Market Timing" and "Security Selection".

The reason against Security Selection is that most of us, myself included aren't half as good as Warren Buffet, who has a flair for analysing businesses. However, during the start of this year, I began investing in specific companies again, as I believe I have found a group of people who can analyse companies with reasonable success and accuracy.

My first encounter with this group/company was around 2011 where I attended one of their preview talks with a friend. As both of us were still studying back then, we did not have much capital to enter into their programme. Fast forward to 3 years later in early 2014, we happen to meet this group in another investment talk by chance, and they were talking about the same strategies they told us back then. The advantage we have of course, is that we were able to verify if those companies they identified 3 years back did well today. The answer is a definite yes. So during this talk, we decided to invest in additional companies mentioned by them, justified both by quantitative and qualitative reasons.

In April, both my friend and I finally decided to enter into their programme to learn their methods of analysing companies. Personally, the methods used can be found generally in Value Investing books/websites. However, the more important reason is to have access to the list of companies they themselves are evaluating, from which I can make my own decisions based on their analysis. Most of us simply to not have the time to do to filter quality companies ourselves.

As of now, I have stopped my monthly contribution to unit trusts to accumulate my opportunity fund. Will "sell in May and go away" situation arise this year? Seriously... no one knows.