The Investor Diary Entry #26: March 31, 2023
The way I understand investment and the key tool to be used in investment decisions is information. How much information can one gather, digest, and analyze. It is all about research. Therefore, the question here is not why research is important. We all know that research in any field is important.
The question here is why research process is important. In a previous entry, which I will try to remember and link to it – but no promises, I mentioned that I am still not settled on a routine. To me a routine is a process.
When there is something that has several activities and is conducted frequently, then without a process that can govern those repeated activities, one will be re-inventing the wheel each time he/she conducts those activities.
The Investment Research Process
The investment research must be governed by a process. This process needs to govern the way information is flowing your way. For example, where are you going to receive news and articles? On your email, at your door step, through mail to your business…etc.
If it is your email, are you going to use an existing email? Your work or personal email? create a dedicated email for your investment activity? Once you figure how you are going to receive information, the next question will be which information sources are you going to use.
Here, you will look for news agencies, specialized magazines, websites, blogs, google alerts…etc.
The Reading Process
Once you decide on the information sources, wait for those sources to start sending you information. After that, you will be able to decide on:
- How to read each source.
- The priority and order of reading your resources
- How this whole process of reading fits into your investment routine and your general day routine
1- How to read each source. How to read a source is extremely important. One needs to be both decisive and dynamic with the decision on how to read each source. This balance between decisiveness and dynamism is crucial for it is the key to your speed in reading and at the same time capturing the important information that you need to capture.
This area gets tricky when you have a long report that you need to read in details, and how to fit such a long reading into your reading routine and how will that affect your whole research process.
2- The priority and order of reading is relatively simple. After some time you will have an idea with which resource you want to start, and then the following order of your reading resources. Some reading sources you might opt to have a different frequency for than the rest of your sources.
Again comes the tricky idea of having a long report to read. Where will you put it in the reading order, and what kind of priority you will give it.
3- Within the whole investment routine, where will the research part be? Within the research part where will the reading be? Some might have there research process equal in activity to their reading process. Meaning that their research is basically made of reading news, articles and reports.
Others will have the reading process is part of the research process. Other research activities could be listening to investment TV channels, researching YouTube or other social platforms on specific topics or companies, meeting people and discussing different investment topics and exchanging information and news, and those are only examples of what could be included in a research process.
Why Am I Still Writing About This?
Logically, the only reason I am writing about this, is that I am struggling with finding an investment routine and research process that I am relaxed with and one that motivates me.
I must admit that currently I am not able to commit to any routine or process. Every day something happens that distracts me, or changes my daily routine, and I have to shuffle things around which leads me to doing half things.
I am aware that one needs to be flexible, and I am currently doing that, but I cannot hide the fact that I am not happy with how my day is going.
My Daily Routine
I remember that on two different entries, those could even be consecutive entries, I wrote that I have found the routine that would be productive for me. Those two entries could even have two different routines, which I think in the second entry this difference caught my attention.
What I am realizing is that my daily routine is the main reason why I am not able to arrive at a research process that I am happy with. There are items in my daily routine that are fighting for their place within the higher order of the daily routine.
The fight between those items or activities is the classical fight between what I want to do and what I must do. Although it is a classical fight, but it has been months and I am not able to find a solution that would satisfy both activities.
Conclusion
In conclusion if a day is not organized, nothing will be. The beginning of my day is not stable. Each day has a different starting time based on many factors. I am still hoping that I will be able to have a fixed starting time.
On the hand, keeping the hope for a fixed starting day time might actually ruin any productive plans. What I must do is that find a way to organize my daily routine based on the current situation. Once my routine is organized I can organize my work and accordingly my investment routine and within that the investment research process.
I am not happy with what is happening because the annual report of Aurora has been there for ages and I am not able to read it because there is always something that come between me and continuing reading it. Reading the annual report of Aurora is part of my decision-making of buying into the company.
I am very much interested in this company and in the industry that it operates within. I want to finalize the reading to be able to come up with my investment decisions for the company in terms of whether I really want to be involved in it or not. If the answer is yes, I will want to know at what price I am willing to do that.
The Investor
Friday 31 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.