James Delingpole
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Had I held my nerve and stayed in there, as Martin Vander Weyer observed the other day, I would have made a great deal more. Tullow — now promoted to the FTSE-100 — bounced back and has been rising ever since. And the main reason I didn’t speaks volumes for my complete and utter crapness as an investor.
Sure, raw naked fear had something to do with it: when a stock drops 25 per cent, you need to be quite brave and counterintuitive not to bail out with the rest of the lemmings. But the main reason, I’m ashamed to say, was grotesque and hideous greed.
My problem with Tullow was that, sound and going places though it clearly was, it didn’t seem to be going there quickly enough to satisfy my newly inflated expectations. This is what happens when you’ve made 50 per cent profit on a stock. You don’t think: ‘Wow! With no effort and no great skill I’ve just made 45 per cent more per annum than I would have done in the building society.’ You think: ‘Bloody hell, what a swizz. I could have made so much more if I’d invested in one of those loony mining stocks or crazy pharmaceuticals numbers that rocket by 125 per cent in one day.’
So that’s exactly what I did with my Tullow profits. Using a clever research method I’ve developed called ‘trawling through the Sunday papers and the internet for the market touts’ wackiest tips’, I bought into a pharmaceuticals company (Alliance Pharma), a gold exploration company (Stratex International) and a platinum mining company (Jubilee). Also, for balance’s sake, I decided I would grudgingly hang on to a rubbishy stock called Gaming King International which I’d bought during that brief period a couple of years ago when gambling stocks looked a sure bet.
After that I forgot about my portfolio for a year, leaving it to do whatever it was going to do. This, experts will recognise, is another reason why I’m never going to make the grade as a serious investor. I’m just too damned fickle. There’ll be periods where I get so obsessive that I track my shares’ movements every half hour. And others when I lose interest for months at a stretch.
Rarely does any of this have to do with the state of the markets. It’s more a reflection of how busy I am and how my career’s going and how panic-stricken I am about the need to earn extra money. I can always tell when things in my life are really dire: they’re the moments when I say to myself, ‘Well, you could always try becoming a day trader.’
I love the gambling side of the stock market. What I’m much less good at is the deep knowledge, careful study and diligent research side of things. But I’m not altogether convinced that this is a disadvantage. After all, it’s the experts who are continually being wrong-footed by the markets’ unexpected rises and falls; and it’s the experts who are responsible for all those closely argued articles one reads saying things like ‘Buy Alliance Pharma’ (down 55 per cent since I bought it) and ‘Buy Gaming King’ (down 72 per cent).
Still, having had my fingers burnt far too many times, I realise I’m going to have to modify my methods slightly. You can take or leave the investment advice I’m about to give, but I think I have here the makings of a winning strategy.
1. Stay faithful. A good share — like Tullow — is as rare and valuable as a quality wife. Sure, there’ll be occasions when you fancy dabbling with something younger and racier, but the risks are high, the rewards often disappointingly slim and the potential for making a fool of yourself quite enormous.
2. Having found your quality share — I also fancy Jubilee Platinum as one of these, but the Stratex one is a complete punt, largely dependent on whether its ‘aggressive’ drilling in Turkey does or doesn’t strike lucky — track its progress daily. Get a feel for its movements up and down, so that you develop an instinct for when it’s cheap and when it’s not. That way, you’ll be able to maintain your flagging interest by enjoying little top-ups and mini-sells when you think it’s over- or undervalued.
3. Be a vulture. When’s the best time to buy? When the market lemmings are losing their heads, obviously. Once their bodies are lying there at the bottom of the cliff all mashed up, that’s when you swoop down for all the juicy pickings. Take Tullow, for example. Whenever there’s one of those big scary market corrections and everything falls by 10 per cent, Tullow’s price will fall too. But because you’ve been following it closely (see 2 above) and understand its real value, you know that it will bounce back much quicker than all the dross out there.
4. Always keep a bit of losable cash handy for the sudden, instinctive punt. We all get these moments, surely? Ones where we know, we absolutely know, that something is going to happen — and then kick ourselves afterwards for not having put money on it. For me this happens not so often with shares as with the Mercury Music Prize. Four times out of five I guess who’s going to win, but only once have I ever gambled on it because the bookie Graham Sharpe happened to be in the room at that moment to take my bet. Mind you, I would have lost this year. Bat For Lashes was way more the obvious winner than the Klaxons.
5. Get a decent financial adviser. Since I met the magnificent Peter Ronald of Helmlake, my life has been transformed. It could, of course, be that this article is the precursor to a harrowing one in a few months titled: ‘My financial adviser destroyed my life’. But God it’s a relief having your investment future taken care of by someone who seems to know what he’s doing, rather than by some gibbering nutter called James Delingpole.
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