Introduction

So... My first blog post!

Whereas maybe no one is going to read this. I still think it's important to share some information about myself and why I'm starting a blog - for the ones who might be interested.

I'm nearly 19-years-young student living in the Netherlands, nearby Rotterdam. I am currently in my first year of Econometrics and Operational Research at Erasmus University Rotterdam, but I'm more busy with investing and reading then studying for my education.

How it all started.

It's just two years ago I started to become extremely interested in investing, but I already can't remember how it exactly started. What I do know is that I was searching for ways to make some money while in school and had still no idea what the hell I was going to do after high school.

So, for the first time in my life I read books out of my own will and those were the 'Millionaire Next Door' and 'Rich Dad Poor Dad'. It changed the way I dealt with money. Before that I spent nearly all my not so hard worked income on clothing, an expensive watch, a new iPhone etc. just because everyone else was doing it and I needed to keep up or try to stay ahead of the hurdle. I came to realize that they were all liabilities and weren't going to serve me well in building my financial wealth.

Then there was a moment when I encountered Warren Buffett - probably on YouTube. I got sucked into his investing philosophy, probably thought it was an easy and good way to make quick money - well... not the case at all. Quite quickly I realized that Buffett's way of investing wasn't fast but his way of investing - buying assets cheap and compounding your financial wealth over time - sounded very legit to me.

[I want to interrupt the story and tell that in the beginning I hated reading books and sucked at it. I was diagnosed with dyslexia in high school and thought of reading as my enemy. I think because a lot of successful people in their field said that reading was one of the most important key drivers of their success, that I started reading some books. After reading those books I developed a habit of reading and curiosity strengthened my habit. Of course, I had periods I just stopped reading but I realized that the most important thing is to always pick up the book and start reading again.]

So, after reading Think and Grow Rich and The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck. I pushed myself to read the Intelligent Investor which laid ground for the principles of my investing today. Slowly, I became more and more interesting in Buffett's and Graham's investing philosophy and consumed a lot of YouTube video's and books - including: Common Stocks Uncommon Profits, The Essays of Warren Buffett, 100-Baggers and One-up On Wall-Street - over the years.

The here and now.

As I look back at the way I looked at companies at the beginning, it's just funny. I thought that a company was undervalued if P/B < 1 and had stable earnings. And it's wàààày more funny if you realize that that way of valuing is better than quite some people are doing now.

Right now, I value companies on a lot of different things. I look at value plays but also at potential compounding machines. I've come to know that qualitive information is really important, especially for compounding machines of course. But also for buying dollars-for-fifty-cents companies is quality important because we need to be able to have a well-informed forecast about the future growth and the risk of the business to be able to generate a legit estimate of the company's value through a discounted cash-flow (DCF) calculation.

I think a DCF is more difficult and more inaccurate for compounding machines and try - after having confident in knowing their future growth rate, risk and quality - to value the company on a next year's EV/EBIT and EV/FCF multiple and compare it with the rate at which I think they will grow for at least 5 years.

Big chance my valuation methods - and all other aspects in the investing space - will improve as I learn more and get more experience.

So, why did I chose to start an investing blog?

First of all, I'm quite passionate about investing. I spent at least several hours a day in this space and feel that my passion is strengthening over time. I love learning and know that an investor needs to keep learning to be successful and eventually to stay successful. I think writing blog posts about things I learned and about interesting companies will help us both enormously in the learning process and will likely improve my investing skills and hopefully yours too!

Besides that, I think that writing itself is just magic. You can clear your thoughts and order them way better. You can find more easily flaws in your thinking and correct them. When I write I need to think more deeply and need to have more correct and well-defined information about the subjects I'm going to write about. This will cost me a lot of time and efforts but will be worth it. Hopefully some smart investors will read my blog posts and share their opinion in the comments to get insightful discussions.

I will probable post not often because I have my university and blogging is new for me, so it will be difficult in the beginning and time consuming to share well-written and valuable insights/information.

I think this is what I wanted to tell. What can you expect from me over the coming weeks/months: not a lot of posts, I will probably write about things that I thought were very interesting and/or educational, and I will try to write comprehensively about companies I own or am interested in.

Thank you for reading and hope to see you again with the next post!