My Worst Investment Ever Podcast

Guest profile Corey Hoffstein is a co-founder of and chief investment officer at Newfound Research, a firm founded in August 2008, which is a quantitative asset management firm specializing in risk-managed, tactical asset allocation strategies. At Newfound, Corey is responsible for portfolio management, oversight of research and communication of the firm’s views to clients. He received his degree in BS in computer science from Cornell University and finished his MS in computational finance from Carnegie Mellon University. Early investing foray – road to the fall Corey’s tale takes place about a decade ago when he was starting out in investing. He thought he had erased the details of its telling as it was such a painful episode of this life. He believed he was playing his part with considerable research on the world of investing, starting with titles such as Benjamin Graham’s Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor and anything available by Warren Buffett. From this he became engrossed in the analysis of individual securities and developed the idea that the “real” opportunity was in micro-cap stocks, finding that special stock no one had found and holding it until the market realizes that one is a genius.   Green investor’s vision blurred in the Internet’s salad days As an impressionable young investor in the days when the Internet was also young, he was greatly taken by all these investment boards, some prominent and large, some with a dozen or so members, all completely anonymous people sharing ideas with one another. In the sort of blind date equivalent of seeking financial advice, he got to know the people, their investment styles, their stock picks and, eventually, that they could be totally making it all up. But, he built a measure of trust in this hidden little world and on one such board a hot tip was suggested, a pink-sheets, over-the-counter (OTC) stock in a company known as Deep Down Incorporated (DPDW.PK, DPDW.US). DPDW is (still) a deep-sea oil exploration and production-services-related company that builds underwater umbilical cords and submarine drones to explore wells. It either leases or sells such technology to big companies.   ‘Underdog target for a buyout’ thesis means ‘gold’ in the offing His thesis was that there was a great R&D operation, a company that is always one big deal away from being “not just profitable, but ultra-profitable” and a sure-thing target for a buyout – The underdog team dealing with big-league industry players. For a time, his “inside scoop” delivered some joy as the stock’s price climbed in a short period, and he took the bait.   “People on these web forums are claiming they’re talking to the CEO and they’re sharing the inside scoop and so you really feel like you have your pulse on it. In retrospect, I didn’t have my pulse on anything but I thought I did and so I watched the stock climb from say 40 cents to 80 cents and I think: ‘You wanna know what? This is happening!’ One of those situations where price confirmed my narrative that probably should’ve been a sign, I probably should have dug a little deeper, didn’t even really understand the fundamentals I was getting involved in. This was pure story-driven investing and I bought. I then watched the stock go from about 80 cents to about a US$1.20.” - Corey Hoffstein   Early success on half-baked research spells peril Corey believes now that these types of early gains are among the worst things that can happen when an investor has made an ill-conceived investment because it ramps up their overconfidence gene and they become so attached to belief in their own abilities. Corey was no exception. Equating luck with genius, and ignoring his own profit target, he said to himself again:   “You wanna know what? The story’s only getting better … now I think we’re going to get to $5”. - Corey Hoffstein   His perceived future was getting rosier because the price was supporting all the myths he had built around the stock. So instead of taking some risk off the table, and banking his gains, he ploughed more funds back in. He then saw the stock price decline. Again he interpreted this as other people taking profit, some pain before the big, long-term gain. But it kept sliding. Did he stop? No. Rather, he thought:   “You wanna know what, this is a buying opportunity. So not only did I buy at the top, I then doubled down on the way down, which you know, again, in retrospect, is not such a smart move because I really didn’t at all understand what I was buying. And then it just continued to dwindle and it probably got back to around 40 cents and stayed at 40 cents.” - Corey Hoffstein   By this time, Corey was so appalled that he stopped checking the price. After three or four years, it was still at 40 cents and he finally let it go. He added that it was not actually his worst investment by dollar value but it was a case in which he made every mistake textbooks say he could have. What is a ‘penny stock trading on a pink sheet’? A pink sheet is a type of stock that is not trading on the main exchanges, such as The New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq and therefore it does not meet the regulatory and exchange requirements to be listed on the main courses. It is also OTC traded, which means it is very illiquid (difficult to sell and turn into cash). And if trusting in web-forum strangers’ was not bad enough, Corey invested in a penny stock. Rather than seeing this as a red flag at the start, it was instead was one of the main reasons that the stock seduced him to invest in it. His belief was that such a stock offered more opportunity for upside. But the turn of events proved otherwise.   Corey’s Takeaways 1. Invest in a manner that aligns with your personality, both the positives and the negatives. If you are someone who truly enjoys the process of understanding company fundamentals, a more discretionary value approach can be totally warranted and appropriate. For Corey personally, he had to see the negative side, which was that he was quite vulnerable to a stock’s story, which thus put him at risk of being an emotional investor. His takeaway, in essence, was what makes him more successful today in that it drove him to find a way to invest in an unemotional manner. How did he do that? 2. Adopt a fully quantitative methodology. This is one you can control from A to Z and would certainly ensure that you are not going to be drawn in and seduced by your own emotions. “Everything I do today is quant. It’s not quant because I’m a robot. I’m quant because I’m emotional and I need those rules to make sure I stay on the straight and narrow.” - Corey Hoffstein 3. Recognize that mistakes are going to happen with investing. It is impossible to avoid all mistakes, even when you are very knowledgeable and aware of them. You are working without all the information, you cannot know who is necessarily on the other side of a trade. It is very important to always consider that you are going to be wrong, and not just wrong once, but many times. Survival, ultimately, is key.   Andrew’s Takeaways The team at A.Stotz investment and Andrew have identified six core mistakes that investors make. Corey made three (although he feels his story could cover them all). 1. Failed to do their own research. We never in the world of investing would invest without doing our own research. 2. Failed to properly assess risk. Risk, as he often says, is a separate item. In this case, there were the risks to liquidity and the structures that were insufficiently put in place and then ignored for the moment that the shares started going down and the investor's response to that moment. 3. Misplaced trust. Corey placed trust in an anonymous forum where people can be releasing different stories for different reasons. They could have neither been investing themselves nor risking anything in what they were proposing and that Corey had no way of knowing it. He pointed out that there are honest people who are sharing their investment experience on the Internet and they are just unable to share it accurately. “I looked on your (Corey’s) website and I see that you’re GIPS® compliant with the CFA, the Global Investment Performance Standard. And basically what GIPS® compliance requires is that you look at your complete portfolio, of all your different asset classes. You don’t omit things that you don’t want to put in.” - Andrew Stotz Even good investors engaging with these types of web boards or groups on sites such as Facebook groups and other types of groups, even good people, find out how it is hard for them to be truthful.   “That doesn’t even consider the liars and the cheaters out there that are everywhere. And I can’t tell you the number of times that people have come to me about how they’re starting to trade in forex. We did have one story already on my worst investment ever where he lost most of his money trading in forex. But I just think of all areas, you know, forex, I just think you’re betting against the central banks of the world. And what’s your angle?” - Andrew Stotz Final words from Corey 1. Investors should really make sure they are well diversified. They should also think about all the ways that a trade can go against them and their criteria for cutting losses. 2. It’s not going to be your only bad trade. You’re going to make many throughout your career. It’s not about not making them. It’s making sure you can survive them. How to avoid having the same fate “Don’t buy penny stocks based on someone else’s recommendation.” “First and foremost acknowledge your own weaknesses. For me, that very much meant acknowledging that I could be very much drawn in by a narrative, was clearly willing to make mental shortcuts in my analysis and allow others to do the work for me at that point in my investing career. And so I wanted to make sure that could never happen again.” Final words from Andrew “There’s great people out there, men and women who can find great investment ideas and make a ton of money from them without having all the structures in place. But for me, it makes me feel better. And I think the best thing in investing is that there’s space in investing for everybody with every style. So find your style and implement your style.” - Andrew Stotz   Resources from Andrew Stotz:  How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market  My Worst Investment Ever  9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them      Connect with Corey Hoffstein: thinknewfound.com LinkedIn Twitter   Connect with Andrew Stotz: astotz.com LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast

Danielle DiMartino Booth is CEO and director of Intelligence for Quill Intelligence LLC, a new research and analytics firm. She is known for her meticulous research in the financial markets and her unique perspective honed from years of experience in central banking and on Wall Street. Danielle is a global thought leader sought after for her insights on monetary policy in the United States and elsewhere. In a sign of her ideas’ value, European Parliamentarians invited her to Brussels in May 2018 to share her insights on global economic trends and fiscal policy.     Track record at Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas  Earlier last decade, Danielle spent nine years from 2006 at the Dallas Fed, where she served as the advisor to that district’s president, Richard W. Fisher, until his retirement in March 2015. She provided market intelligence and policy briefings and advised Fisher on policy, a unique role, which had not existed outside of the New York Fed before her appointment. Get to know Danielle in today’s feature story, her remarkable career journey from working in equity markets and then being an advisor to Fisher, to her current role as a financial consultant, author, and commentator. More importantly, discover what she regards as her most significant investment loss and the valuable lessons she learned from it.      “My biggest lesson that I’ve ever learned is that I will never again deny the simplicity and the utility of liquidity and it’s as simple as that.”  - Danielle DiMartino Booth     Financial analyst has dodged some serious bullets in her time  While these podcasts are about missteps all our guests have made, Danielle has also had a considerable share of good fortune or made decisions that saved her from calamity; none perhaps more than her rejection of employment offers from four of the most infamous or ill-fated companies in US history: Arthur Andersen, Enron, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns.     So, as she told Andrew: “You never know in life that your choice might just end up being serendipitous but indeed providential at the same time.” This all happened was right before Danielle started working on Wall Street, which was before she returned to Dallas to serve at the Federal Reserve, which was also a move she had never planned to make. Danielle revisits New York every two or three weeks to contribute analysis to media outlets as one of the “Fed Whisperers,” offering explanations as she “understands how central bankers think,” which is a rare talent.     ‘Chief architect’ of liquidity rebirth failed to take her own advice  As a Fed insider, Danielle witnessed the meltdown following the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Her Dallas Fed boss at the time, Richard Fisher, was being criticized for comments against the Fed lowering interest rates to the “zero-bound.” He had pointed out that the ongoing problem was not a case of the price of credit being the impediment to the market working but rather liquidity being frozen, despite it being richly liquid in the years beforehand.     Danielle witnessed and understood her boss’ comments. She had helped to create many of the liquidity systems applied via the New York Fed. She had helped to turn on the financial “jaws of life” to force open the capital markets with liquidity facilities. What she realizes now is she had listened but not truly heard, looked but not truly seen. She had learned nothing from experience.    Despite being “one of the chief architects of these facilities”, she said was perhaps blinded by the emotion brought on by taking interest rates to zero unnecessarily. Then she saw first-hand the collapse of the global investment bank, Lehman Brothers, and the bailout of AIG at the cost of US$85 billion bailouts. In the following months, she saw quantitative easing (QE, more or less printing money) rolled out and the effect that had on financial markets. Again and again, she failed to recall the lesson she had taught others about the importance of liquidity.    Now 10 years on, Danielle notes that the European Central Bank (ECB) finally stopped its QE program (one of the measures used to stimulate liquidity and therefore the markets) early this year but flags up that it is going to be the first for being “net negative in a global liquidity position in over a decade”.      Danielle’s takeaways  1. When liquidity opened up, Danielle says she should have jumped in feet first and invested enthusiastically to follow the flow until ECB chairman Mario Draghi put a halt on the ECB’s QE, but not until then because …   2. “Liquidity is global. It is fungible, it is agnostic, it knows no borders, and it knows no asset classes. It flows to wherever the cracks are open.” Liquidity moves where it can “find a home.” Every single asset class in the world has moved up, even gold, because of the rise in liquidity, which, over the past decade, “has found many homes”:   Australian, New Zealand and Canadian real estate  Many commodities markets  Hong Kong residential real estate   Commercial real estate in London   Corporate bonds in the United States   Stocks almost anywhere   3. Investors need to understand that as long as the wave of liquidity exists, they should not fight the waves. She explains: “As long as the liquidity is abundant, then you should be invested in risky assets.”    4. BUT: Now that liquidity is being withdrawn, the markets (and investors) do not like it at all.    5. Investors worldwide should be really aware of what central bankers are doing, and that is, all central bank bosses are applying the same policies 

Vorapon Jim  Ponvanit is the founder and CEO of a PeerPower, a Fintech start-up focusing on SME marketplace lending in Thailand. He is also a partner in boutique advisory firm, Khronos, and has 18 years’ experience in M&A, investments, and restructuring. He is an educated investor in stocks, bonds, and has a solid, diversified portfolio. He and his wife are also avid food connoisseurs and shacmd+shift+vre a love of dogs.     Summary: Ups and downs on Jim’s investment path   In this episode, Jim shares the gems he has learned on his investment journey, including how research alone is not enough to guarantee your success. There are “what-if” questions all investors need to ask to substantiate your assumptions. And the exciting part is to identify the common investment mistakes that can be avoided and to “wait for the right pitch”. Since investment is a lifetime exercise, you’ll also learn more about the six-step guidelines Andrew offers to help you to better understand the investment process.     “The whole point of investing is you want to live to fight another day. And you want to make sure that you have fewer mistakes and more successes. That’s all you can hope for because nobody hits home runs every time, right?”  – Vorapon Jim Ponvanit      Skilled investor seeks to diversify gains after post-crisis boom time   Around eight years after the 2008 financial crisis, Jim started to liquidate his US portfolio. He put some money into structured bonds and equities, which made considerable gains in the following run-up of US stocks.   He then took that liquidity in mid-2015 and was looking to diversify and make use of his capital. At this time, his obsession with volatility began alongside a search for ways to trade on such conditions, and took a look at the VIX index.   He found there was no direct way to expose investors to that index, other than buying derivatives or self-building a portfolio but noticed a new product called exchange-traded notes (ETN).   Armed with research noting that the VIX was down around 40% year-to-date and brimming with confidence and cash from successes on the US bull market, he invested 50% of his liquid funds in one such ETN, the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX), which he thought would track the VIX index well.  He had convinced himself that volatility had reached its bottom since the crisis, the side of the research that backed his story.    Four months in and 40% down he again relies on research and invests more   A third of a year into the investment, and with his position was down 40%, does he pull out? No. He did more research and after that, remaining convinced that volatility had this time reached its lowest point, proceeded to put the other 50% of his hard-earned cash in.  Period of VXX ETN volatility product activity   Source: Yahoo Finance    After a year involved in the ETN, Jim lost 70% of his initial investment’s value   Early in 2017, he liquidated from his portfolio the position in VXX and lost close to 70% of what he put in during the course of 14 months. He recently checked the price of VXX and if he had held on to that position, he would have been down now, 87%, which he said was a minor consolation.     Importance of keeping an open mind and cutting losses   That was his worst investment ever, and not because he didn’t know what he wanted to do but because he actually went in with a plan, found research that supported that thesis, and kept on reading. He stuck to his contrarian nature and ignored what the market was saying, thinking ideas that opposed his thesis were just “people selling research”.      Jim’s Takeaways     Avoid overconfidence – Don’t be overconfident, no matter how much you know or how successful you have been with investing in the past.   Don’t practice information-selection bias – in carrying out your research, include all information in your assessment of whether to go ahead with an assessment, especially if research contradicts your initial thesis. And furthermore …  Listen to the market...

Channarong Kitinartintranee is the Senior Financial Advisor of KBank Private Banking Group. He joined Kasikornbank in 2018 with a key focus in Thai economics and equities. Before that, he worked as a mutual fund and institutional private fund portfolio manager at Krung Thai Asset Management with more than 10 billion baht focusing on mid-scale cap stocks. Channarong holds an MSc Finance from Thammasat University and has been a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) since 2012. Hear from Channarong as he shares his worst investment story.  Know why it is essential always to remember the basics and fundamentals of investing. Learn why we should not let past success make us overconfident.   “Don't forget the basic investment things, the valuation, the fundamental.” - Channarong Kitinartintranee Topics Covered: 01:07 – Andrew gives a summary of our guest’s working experience 03:04 – Channarong tells how the mid to small cap stocks he invested when he started in Krung Thai Asset Management performed very well at the start but turned out his worst investment 09:44 – Revealing the valuable lessons he got in his investment loss 11:40 – Andrew shares his takeaways in this story 15:17 – Additional important lesson from Channarong 16:48 – Actionable advice to avoid suffering the same fate: “Don't let past success makes you overconfident because you will end up failing. Challenge your past successes. Don't trust them.” 16:57 – Parting words from our guest: “Keep investing. If you don't invest, you'll never get the compounding effect of having your money in the market.” Main Takeaways: Lesson 1: “Gaining and losing in the investment in the market is a physical thing.”– Andrew Stotz Lesson 2: “It's important to discuss the concept of how a portfolio is exposed. The first exposure I'll call global drivers, and global drivers are things like oil price.  The second thing is the concept of exposure to factors. The most common factors are value and momentum and also, size exposure. I wouldn't necessarily call it a factor, but I'd call it a size exposure because you can implement a factor strategy in a mid-cap space.”– Andrew Stotz Lesson 3: “If you're investing in a certain type of exposure, whether that's to size to global factors or other factors such as valuation and momentum, remember those factors.  The reason why factor investing can be very difficult is it sometimes you could even create a fund or a strategy around a factor that had worked and then it may not work for the next five years. That doesn't mean that factor doesn't work or that exposure doesn't work such as a small cap or mid-cap stocks. It just means that it's out of favor. When you build only a narrow factor exposure, try to understand when that factor will be in and out of favor. And that is a very, very hard thing to do, but that's the message that you have to communicate when you're doing that type of fund.”– Andrew Stotz Lesson 4: “What I took away from what you've talked about is the concept of liquidity. And particularly because your story is about mid and smaller stocks, these stocks tend to have a higher risk of not being able to be liquid when you need to sell them at a reasonable price you can't. And that's the concept of illiquidity.”– Andrew Stotz Resources from Andrew Stotz: Andrew Stotz book 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them My Worst Investment Ever How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market Connect with Channarong Kitinartintranee: LinkedIn Connect with Andrew Stotz: astotz.com LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast

Tahnoon Pasha grew up in the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. He has a Bachelor of Business Administration and an M.B.A. from the University of Karachi, Pakistan. He is a chartered financial analyst and has been a member of the CFA Institute since 1995. He is based in Spencer Stuart’s Singapore office and is a member of the firm’s Financial Services Practice. Before Spencer Stuart, Tahnoon was the co-founder and the chief executive officer of Cynopsis Solutions. He also served at Aviva Investors as CEO of both the Asia Pacific regional hub in Singapore and the equity and fixed income businesses in the region. And for some years, Tahnoon worked as head of regional equity investments for MFC Global Investment Management (Asia). With nearly three decades of experience in the investment management industry, Tahnoon specializes in financial services searches, working with a range of clients in the asset management, insurance and sovereign wealth sectors in Southeast Asia. Get to know Tahnoon as he unveils what he considered his worst investment ever. Understand why it is very crucial to be cautious about your level of conviction to a particular sector or trade, and why it is very crucial to work with the right team that you can trust and will speak truth to you and that will help you become a better investor.   “I think the mistake was the level of conviction I invested in that particular trade.” - Tahnoon Pasha What do you want to hear from the My Worst Investment Ever Podcast? Tell us here! Resources:  My Worst Investment Ever Book myworstinvestmentever.com Topics Covered: 00:45 – Summary of our guest’s educational and professional backgrounds 03:19 – Tahnoon narrates why he considers structural underweight in his portfolio his worst investment and the two important circumstances leading to it 05:54 – Explaining why it is hard to model the levels of return and the modeling perspective missed 10:25 – Summing up the remarkable lessons learned from his experience 12:00 – Andrew shares his takeaways 16:44 – One actionable advice from Tahnoon: “Surround yourself with smart people.  If you've got people around that you can trust and who will speak truth to you, you're going to be a much, much better investor. Don't try and do it alone.” 18:03 – Parting words from our guest Main Takeaways: Lesson 1: “First was that I misread the boom itself. The second was that I misread the effectiveness of the change in production models that had that boom based on outsourcing and contractual arrangements rather than on direct consolidated, centralized manufacturing.”– Tahnoon Pasha Lesson 2: “What's interesting about valuation is nobody knows what the value is until it arrives. So, we're left making assumptions in models.”– Andrew Stotz Lesson 3: “There are cases when the assumptions that seem to be traditional and realistic get blown out of the water, and it's not so much that the model is flawed.  It's just that if you force yourself to operate only within that model, you may force yourself to make assumptions. That just may not be the case in a unique situation of an exploding industry.”– Andrew Stotz Lesson 4: “It turns out, the auto industry is not a good model for technology. It didn't have the same kind of cost downs regarding the iterations and obviously, the time between generations in the auto industry was much longer and slower than we saw in technology. What we really should have thought was about how the industry was playing out in and of itself and by trying to use proxies that were poor matches for the for the industry. We lead ourselves wrong.”– Tahnoon Pasha Lesson 5: “Without the right assumptions, it's hard to come out with the right result. And it's not always the structure that's to blame.”– Andrew Stotz You can also check out Andrew’s books How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market My Worst Investment Ever 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Transform Your Business with Dr.Deming’s 14 Points Connect with Tahnoon Pasha: LinkedIn Connect with Andrew Stotz: astotz.com Linkedin Facebook Instagram Twitter Youtube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast

Nicolas Rabener is the founder of FactorResearch, which provides quantitative solutions for factor investing. Previously he created Jackdaw Capital; an award-winning quantitative investment manager focused on equity market neutral strategies. Before that, Nicolas worked at Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) in London focused on real estate investments across the capital structure. He started his career working in investment banking at Citigroup in London and New York. Nicolas holds a Master of Finance from HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, is a CAIA charter holder and enjoys endurance sports like 100km Ultramarathon, Mont Blanc, and Mount Kilimanjaro. Listen as Nicolas will uncover the worst investment experience in his real estate venture.  Learn why it is important to avoid complexity in your investments.    “I would urge most people to dramatically reduce your portfolios from a complexity perspective, especially on the retail side.” - Nicolas Rabener   What do you want to hear from the My Worst Investment Ever Podcast? Tell us here! Resources:  My Worst Investment Ever Book myworstinvestmentever.com Topics Covered: 00:41 – Andrew introduces our guest with his educational and working experiences 02:27 – Nicolas reveals what made him become an investor 04:32 – Telling how he evolved in his job investing in real estate stocks 06:28 – How persistence in doing marathons relates to investing 08:32 – Sharing his first investment loss in his career when overseeing the real estate fund of Jackdaw Capital involving two companies managing prisons on behalf of US government 16:48 – Andrew mentions his takeaways from this story 18:32 – Nicolas gives a piece of actionable advice to our listeners 20:44 – Andrew wraps up the show and emphasizes three important things: create, grow and protect your wealth Main Takeaways: Lesson 1: “Sometimes logic isn't what happens in the stock market. Sometimes people overreact, or they may not think fully and completely that only 10% would potentially be at risk.”– Andrew Stotz Lesson 2: “Expect the unexpected, because, from a real estate perspective, this is an asset-backed business. So, I guess the learning curve is that no matter how defensive in what you can expect, sometimes you do get punched in the face.”– Nicolas Rabener Lesson 3: “Avoid the complexity because complexity on the investment side is often the enemy.”– Nicolas Rabener Lesson 4: “We generally create wealth from a business. If you go into the stock market thinking you’re going to create your wealth; you're probably going to lose.  However, the stock market is good for growing your wealth. In protecting your wealth, for investors out there, some of the academic research I did showed that in Asia you need about ten stocks to diversify away.”– Andrew Stotz   You can also check out Andrew’s books How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market My Worst Investment Ever 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Transform Your Business with Dr.Deming’s 14 Points   Connect with Nicolas Rabener: factorresearch.com LinkedIn Twitter Connect with Andrew Stotz: astotz.com Linkedin Facebook Instagram Twitter Youtube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast

Bill Winterberg is the founder of FPPad, a technology publication and business consulting firm to financial services organizations.  Bill produced the FPPad Fintech Flash Briefing and was the host of FPPad Bits and Bytes, video broadcast and email newsletter covering technology news and information for financial professionals. He provided technology commentaries for the Journal of Financial Planning and was the monthly technology columnist for Morningstar Advisor.  InvestmentNews recognized Bill as a 40 Under 40 Honoree for his influence in the industry, and he was named to the 2013 IA 25 list of the most influential people in the profession. Before entering financial services, Bill was a software engineer for Hewlett Packard and LeapFrog Toys. On a personal note, he lives in Atlanta, GA with his wife and nine-year-old son. Listen to Bill as he shares his worst investment ever story purchasing a manufactured home that he and his wife bought out of a loan, the events that made them decide to sell the property, the tedious selling process they've experienced, and the ballooning interest loans that they had to settle while trying to let go of the property. Don’t miss out this truly relevant story of decision making and learn from the consequences that Bill made.   “It doesn't even necessarily need to be whether or not this investment has gone bad or is still good, but some or many times, circumstances happen in your life that you cannot predict.” – Bill Winterberg What do you want to hear from the My Worst Investment Ever Podcast? Tell us here! Resources:  My Worst Investment Ever Book myworstinvestmentever.com Your Money or Your Life Topics Covered: 01:23 – Bill’s personal and professional experience   05:14 – Bill shares how he purchased a home in San Francisco and how it ended up as a bad investment after a life-changing situation 18:21 – Lessons learned by our guest 20:36 – Andrew shares his three takeaways from this story: knowledge in your investment, criticality in timing, and the concept of inches and seconds 23:24 – Highlighting the compounding effect of money 26:21 – Andrew wraps up the show with remarkable teachings from the book “Your Money or Your Life” 27:41 – Encouraging last words from Bill: “Take what you learned from our discussion today and apply it not just to an anecdotal story like what you just heard, but apply it to your opportunities today and your opportunities in the future.” Main Takeaways: Lesson 1: “Try your best not to underestimate the value of flexibility, and liquidity is important in there too.”– Bill Winterberg Lesson 2: “We were not wise to the fact that there was this language in the location of the house that restricted that flexibility. It took us two years to sell. It's that liquidity and not having any offers to buy for two years.”– Bill Winterberg Lesson 3: “The real benefits of compounding don't come to us until 20 or 30 years later.” – Andrew Stotz Lesson 3: “A common thing that people say (in investing in the stock market) is to make mistakes while you're young because you can recover from them. But what I say, in the world of finance don't make your mistakes when you're young because the compounding impact of those financial mistakes is enormous.” – Andrew Stotz Lesson 4: “That book (Your Money or Your Life) taught me that, ultimately, is when we're spending, we're spending our energy and what I learned from that book is to live deeply below your means. And I believe that that challenged me throughout my whole life to see if I could live deeply below my means.” – Andrew Stotz You can also check out Andrew’s books How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market My Worst Investment Ever 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Transform Your Business with Dr.Deming’s 14 Points Connect with Bill Winterberg: fppad.com LinkedIn Twitter YouTube Connect with Andrew Stotz: astotz.com Linkedin Facebook Instagram Twitter Youtube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast

Ralph Woodcock is a Partner with St. James’s Place and based in Shenzhen, China. Ralph is an ACIS member of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI) and has worked in the offshore financial services industry for over five years. He is very passionate about delivering tailored and holistic solutions to his clients and committed to building long-term relationships by providing a source of trusted advice dependent on their financial needs. Because of this, Ralph is also an active member of the expatriate community in China.  Ralph’s focus is on ensuring his clients receive the best help possible providing expertise with the design and implementation of customized investment solutions. These goals can vary from wealth management, retirement planning, education planning or specialized insurance needs. Ralph believes that investing doesn’t need to be complicated and it’s up to St. James’s Place to make it simple and transparent. Outside of work Ralph likes to spend time with his family and explore the historical landmarks throughout China and visit their many hidden treasures. Originally from England, Ralph also enjoys following the Premier League and Formula 1 Racing. In this episode, Ralph shares his bitcoin investment story, the due diligence challenges involved in his venture, his sentiments about his losses, the preventive measures he should have made and the lessons he learned from the experience. Catch this very relevant story and determine why you should not follow the crowd into the bitcoin disaster.   “Make sure we understand the assets we're investing in and how something that looks so good can fall over. And then, we regret that.” – Ralph Woodcock   What do you want to hear from the My Worst Investment Ever Podcast? Tell us here! Resources:  My Worst Investment Ever Book myworstinvestmentever.com Topics Covered: 03:07 – Ralph recalls how his bitcoin investment in 2007  04:44 – Cryptocurrencies and ICOs: challenges in its the due diligence 05:51 – Ralph’s sentiments in his losses, the preventive measures he should have made 07:07 – The lessons our guest learned from this investment 08:03 – Andrew sums up his takeaways 10:45 – One great advice from Ralph: “Just sit down with a professional, whatever you want to say, whether you agree with them.” Main Takeaways: Lesson 1: “In the case of cryptocurrencies, it's tough to do their research because there's very little to grab onto and you could.”– Andrew Stotz Lesson 2: “The lesson I learned from it is not to pick my asset class.”– Ralph Woodcock Lesson 3: “I'm talking to a lot of people that have invested in cryptocurrencies, and my conclusion is many of them have lost a lot of money.  And the first thing is that it tends to be that different in your case, but in a lot of cases it's people that know nothing about investing at all and therefore, they end up going in really aggressive.”– Andrew Stotz Lesson 4: “One of many different risk management tools that we have is to move into something in a smaller position or move into something slowly.”– Andrew Stotz Lesson 5: “The key thing from my perspective is that we have to have volatility over the long run because if something's producing a steady return, it's going to be a very low return.”– Andrew Stotz You can also check out Andrew’s books How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market My Worst Investment Ever 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Transform Your Business with Dr.Deming’s 14 Points Connect with Ralph Woodcock: LinkedIn Connect with Andrew Stotz: astotz.com Linkedin Facebook Instagram Twitter Youtube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast

Michael Batnick is the Director of Research at Ritholtz Wealth Management where he reads research publications and stays on top the latest trends in the industry. He is a member of the investment committee and heads up the company’s internal research efforts. He spends most of his time developing and implementing risk management and portfolio strategies for the firm’s clients. His career began with a sales position at a life insurance company. In May 2018, he published his book, Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments. Michael holds a bachelor degree in Economics from the Queens College. He enjoys reading books and spending time with his family in his spare time. In this episode, Michael shares his golden nuggets of wisdom in investing.  Listen as he reveals why keeping a journal and writing down notes helped him change the way he thinks and apply them in his investments. For our new and inexperienced listeners in the stock market, take away those note-worthy tips as well.  Get educated and be inspired by his story.   “If you write a journal and you're writing your logic down, you'll find very quickly that the biases (you have) are just as susceptible as anybody else's.” - Michael Batnick What do you want to hear from the My Worst Investment Ever Podcast? Tell us here! Resources:  My Worst Investment Ever Book myworstinvestmentever.com Resources from Michael Batnick: Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments Listen to his Podcast: Animal Spirits Topics Covered: 01:08 – Brief background of our featured guest 03:08 – Michael recounted when he bought Apple stocks in 2013 and why he considers this as his biggest loss 05:36 – Why keeping a diary and writing down notes (journaling) helped him managed his risks 09:34 – Summary of the learnings from his book 12:26 – Sharing what he learned about clients and having financial plans 17:20 – Andrew stresses the value of pre-planning for the worst case 17:49 – Great advice to listeners who are new to the stock market 21:23 – Invitation to read Michael’s book Main Takeaways: Lesson 1: “I think one of the reasons that, I smelled the roses fairly early on, was because I was keeping a diary and I think a lot of people don't even have a sense of what their performance is.”– Michael Batnick Lesson 2: “I think that the difference between successful investors, like super successful investors, done the rest of us is that they can move past it.”– Michael Batnick Lesson 3: “I'm a big believer in having rules when you're investing, whether that is just a simple checklist of the type of stocks you buy or some risk management system.”– Michael Batnick Lesson 4: “Just get started, but be careful. Don't risk too much money, lose money because that's the only way that you're going to learn them. And believe me, you will lose money, but keep it reasonable. Keep it small. Don't put yourself in a position where you're overextending yourself, but I don't think that anybody could tell you how to invest. Nobody could say, don't buy active mutual funds. Don't buy index funds. They're boring. Don't do this. Don't do that. You have to figure it out on your own. And some people never get there.”– Michael Batnick Lesson 5: “The only way to learn what style of investing matches your personality is to invest. And nobody could tell you what it feels like to lose money. So, you have to experience that on your own.”– Michael Batnick You can also check out Andrew’s books How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market My Worst Investment Ever 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Transform Your Business with Dr.Deming’s 14 Points Connect with Michael Batnick: theirrelevantinvestor.com LinkedIn Twitter Connect with Andrew Stotz: astotz.com Linkedin Facebook Instagram Twitter Youtube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast

Olan Suthivej is currently the VP of Thailand Investment Banking & Capital Market (IBCM) at Credit Suisse based in Bangkok. He joined Credit Suisse in 2014 and has over 12 years of extensive investment banking experience in equity, equity-linked, debt financing, and M&A advisory transactions. Before joining Credit Suisse, Olan was an Associate Director in the Investment Banking department at UBS Securities Thailand and was responsible for client coverage and origination. Before relocating back to Bangkok, he worked in the Fixed Income Currencies & Commodities (FICC) at UBS Hong Kong and was responsible for sales and distributions of financial products (e.g., bonds, derivatives, commodities) to Thai clients. He started his career in investment banking as an Analyst at Phatra Securities based in Bangkok. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Economics with an emphasis in Accounting and holds an MBA from Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration.  He is very happily married with two wonderful children. Get to know Olan as he unveils his worst investment ever story. Discover how he lost 20% of his portfolio by listening to stock tips. Learn why it is crucial for an investor to set a stop loss and to follow discipline in trading.   “It takes discipline to master your emotion.” – Olan Suthivej What do you want to hear from the My Worst Investment Ever Podcast? Tell us here! Resources:  My Worst Investment Ever Book myworstinvestmentever.com Topics Covered: 01:26 – Andrew tells about Olan’s background in career and education   02:52 – Olan recalls how his stocks investments during his MBA days were initially doing well but eventually turned out loosing 20% 05:28 – Lessons learned by our guest 06:22 – Andrew summarizes his takeaways 12:08 – Olan gives an option on how and what to invest if you don’t actively trade in stocks 13:29 – Ending the show with this simple but powerful advice: “Stay focused and be disciplined.” Main Takeaways: Lesson 1: “You should follow your initial target. It takes discipline to master your emotion. It's like gambling as always. If you win more, you always want to win a bit more. But again, I think the great trader always follow their disciplines and make a decision because he's always in the news. You win some, (you) lose some.”– Olan Suthivej Lesson 2: “The first one (mistake people did) is it failed to do their research.  The second major area that people make is failing to properly assess risk. The other thing is the concept of a tip.”– Andrew Stotz Lesson 3: “If you make a profit, you will never make a loss, no matter how big or small it was. It's still a profit. At least you know, you're not losing any money.” – Olan Suthivej You can also check out Andrew’s books How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market My Worst Investment Ever 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Transform Your Business with Dr.Deming’s 14 Points Connect with Olan Suthivej: LinkedIn Connect with Andrew Stotz: astotz.com Linkedin Facebook Instagram Twitter Youtube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast