I look for companies that lack effective competition. I invest only in stocks I understand well. My current sectors of choice are the internet and personal computers and devices, with a focus on companies that build dominant or increasingly popular platforms. A platform in this sense is something that has a critical mass of users that depend on it and can't easily switch (network effects).
As you can see from my returns, this strategy brings big swings* in the performance of the portfolio, but in the medium to longer term the returns are substantially higher than the market.
I lo...
more
In 2002, during the height of the bear market, I was concerned about the performance of my mother's investment portfolio and managed to convince her to let me clean out it out. After a brief period of holding blue-chips and oil companies I bought into mostly gold mining companies. Making some accurate investment and macro-economic decisions while following the stock picks of an investment newsletter writer (Steven Saville) gave me great returns and thus the confidence to want to continue and to improve. As I began to move away from mining equities and make my own stock choices I was protected ...
more
TimothyP
S&P 500 
