The Investor Diary Entry #20: March 8, 2023
Finally, I found my small cap company list. During the past couple of weeks I was torn between wanting to invest in the Drone manufacturing industry, the Hydrogen Fuel Industry, the EV industry, in addition to the AI industry and wanting to invest in small cap companies.
I lost my research routine, which ate up my day and I would spend hours roaming around and browsing this company and that company. My days were extremely inefficient, and I would spend hours working but without any achievement to talk about.
Today while doing my news reading routine, which I have not done for a very long time, I came up across Nikola (NKLA).
Nikola Was The Beginning
The share price level of Nikola alongside what Nikola does, was amazing for me. I left my news reading routine, as I have been doing for the last couple of weeks, and started looking into Nikola.
Its financials is not encouraging. Because of its bad performance, there was nothing to analyze in terms of estimated future cashflows. Therefore, with such companies it is hard to apply the value investment concepts and calculations.
Again, dropping my research routine, I headed directly to the news section of my routine without getting to know what the analysts are forecasting and without analyzing the stock.
Then there was one of those articles that lists a bunch of companies and stocks that have one thing in common. Although I skip a lot of those articles as I feel that they are more of an advertising copy rather than an analytical article.
I clicked on the article, and sure enough I found a small cap companies list which operated in different industries most of which were industries I am interested to invest in.
Westport and Ouster
Yes, there is nothing in common between those two companies. Well, actually there is. Both companies are small cap companies. I was supposed to buy Westport stock yesterday, but its price went up of the original price that I wanted to buy on which was USD1.12 to become USD1.21.
While looking into Westport yesterday, and watching whether there was a chance for the price to drop back in a short period of time, I took notice of Ouster which is a company that I have stocks in.
I didn’t buy Ouster stocks. I original bought Velodyne Lidar (VLDR), but a merger happened recently and my stocks were transferred to become Ouster’s. After being on the green with Ouster, yesterday I realized that I was in the red. I also realized that I did not include a buying notification for Ouster, and the notification is still set up for VLDR.
Since I have the company now in my portfolio I decided that I will buy more of it if it fell below the USD1.00 level. When the merger took place the number of my shares went down because of the conversion rate between both stocks, and my average price of buying the stock went up to USD1.20.
Today one of the main things that I wanted to check, whether those two companies hit there target prices. For WRPT, I afraid that the chances are more for a price increase than a decrease. For Ouster, there is a good chance for the price to fall to USD1.00, but I think there will be a general psychological barrier for it to fall below this level.
Another Day Without Achievements
As soon as I realized that today I might not be able to buy WPRT or OUST, my routine started to shuffle, and time started to slip by again. As soon as I realized this, I took charge. I opened my tasks book, and started applying the non-investment tasks first.
I left the investment tasks until the end, which although it stayed astray in terms of organization and effectiveness, but at least this led me to creating a company list that will make me regain my investment routine.
Today’s Outcome
Today passed without being able to make any research on a single stock. Yes, I did not add any stock to my watchlist nor was I able to invest in any of the companies that are currently on my watchlist. Still, I am happy that I was able to create a small cap company list that includes companies that are as well within the industries that I am looking to invest in.
Conclusion
Without a routine, a person can hardly achieve anything. For me, deviating from the routine that I drew for myself gets me work aimlessly, and the day would pass without any meaningful achievement.
It does not matter how many hours a person works. What matters is what was the person able to achieve in those hours. For me, even reading and analyzing must be controlled by a process; otherwise, days can be lost in reading and analysis.
Did I find all the answers to reach a final process for investing. No, I didn’t. I am still not sure about the cost averaging process that I am following. The question is if this methodology applies to small cap companies.
The Investor
Wednesday 8 March 2023
About The Author
I started to look into individual stocks in January 2022. I created this diary initially for myself to track my investing progress, and second as a place that I can share my ideas publicly hoping that others will share their ideas and learn from each other, and lastly as an online business where some links that I share are affiliate links, and if anybody bought anything by clicking those links I will get a commission based on that successful sale, which of course will not affect the price that you are buying the product or service at.
For a more detailed information on my affiliate disclosure please refer to the Full Affiliate Disclosure page, and if you are interested in building your own online business you can check this post here.
Furthermore, this site is in no way or form is giving any financial or investing advice, nor it is encouraging or discouraging people to buy or sell any financial instrument. This is a personal diary in which I track my own progress and share for informational, educational and entertainment purposes.