How Do You Find It So Hard to Separate the Wheat From the Child?

This week our guest is Paul Andreola. He is the publisher of SmallCap Discoveries and full-time microcap investor. Today, we discussed why illiquidity is a benefit, the advantages of being a CEO, his research process, immediate green and red flags, and how to spot the next $XPEL!

• [0:00] Introduction: The most difficult parts of micro-cap investing in the last two years.
• [1:40] Benefit of illiquidity
• [6:50] Being a CEO
• [11:00] What was the why for $XPEL?
• [12:50] How much of a cost burden is staying public?
• [15:40] Using the CANSLIM method with micro-caps.
• [23:00] Lessons from investing in Bowflex and Medifast ($MED).
• [27:33] Cheapies with a chance: Paul’s Process
• [28:41] Reading 10Ks
• [31:00] Capturing Inflection Points
• [35:00] Share Dilution
• [38:48] Immediate Red Flags
• [40:40] Immediate Green Flags
• [44:14] Cenco Tech
• [50:05] Acceleware
• [52:14] Inventronics (TSX:IVX)
• [56:14] PosaBit
• [59:14] Doing it all over it again
• [1:02:54] More from Paul and Closing Questions 

Finally, a big thanks to the following sponsors for making the podcast a reality.

Check out Paul on Twitter here and his website here.

Mitimco

This episode is brought to you by MIT Investment Management Company, also known as MITIMCo, the investment office of MIT. Each year, MITIMCo invests in a handful of new emerging managers who it believes can earn exceptional long-term returns in support of MIT's mission. To help the emerging manager community more broadly, they created emergingmanagers.org, a website for emerging manager stockpickers.

For those looking to start a stock-picking fund or just looking to learn about how others have done it, I highly recommend the site. You'll find essays and interviews by successful emerging managers, service providers used by MIT's own managers, essays MITIMCo has written for emerging managers and more!

Quartr

Quartr is revolutionizing the way investors interact with IR departments, listen to conference calls, and conduct research. The best way to think of Quartr is like Spotify for investor conference calls. Quartr is 100% free and includes markets from 12+ countries (with plans to expand in the future!). Investors can easily request new companies, and Quartr is quick to add them. You can learn more about Quartr by visiting their site, Quartr.se

If you're interested in changing the way you research companies, download the app today and give it a try on Apple and Android.

Tegus

Tegus has the world’s largest collection of instantly available interviews on all the public and private companies you care about. Tegus actually makes primary research fun and effortless, too. Instead of weeks and months, you can learn a new industry or company in hours, and all from those that know it best.

I spend nearly all my time reading Tegus calls. And I know you will too. If you’re interested, head on over to tegus.co/valuehive for a free trial to see for yourself.

TIKR

TIKR is THE BEST resource for all stock market data, I use TIKR every day in my process, and I know you will too. Make sure to check them out at TIKR.com/hive.