Most investors get it backwards. They spend hours watching stock tickers and reading headlines when they should be doing this instead.
I learned this the hard way. My first big investment was a “sure thing” tech stock in 2018. Six months later, I’d lost 60%. The problem wasn’t bad luck. I simply didn’t know how to evaluate a business.
That changed when I met a retired fund manager at my local library. His advice shocked me:
“Stop picking stocks. Start studying them. Treat it like learning the piano, note that nobody masters Chopin in a week.”
He showed me his notebook from 1975. Page after page of handwritten company analyses. No fancy software, just pencil, paper, and relentless repetition.
Here’s the routine that transformed my results:
1. The 10-Minute Daily Drill
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Open one annual report (start with companies you use daily)
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Answer three questions:
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What does this company actually sell?
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Who pays them money?
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Could a competitor take their customers?
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2. The Saturday Morning Test
Pick one stock you own. Pretend you have to explain it to a 12-year-old in three sentences. If you can’t, you don’t understand it well enough.
3. The Quarterly Autopsy
When a trade goes wrong, write down:
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What you thought would happen
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What actually happened
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The single biggest reason you were wrong
