These days we have a vast number of investors for whom the stock market plays a fairly major part in their daily life. Some will be active part-time investors who fit their investment activities around paid employment and others may well be “living the dream” and be loosely classified as a full-time investor. Strange thing is, how do you identify or characterise a full-time investor? Is it somebody who sits at a screen all day watching every move of the market and trading frequently or is the Terry Smith type sitting on one's hands and doing very little to a quality portfolio. Well in truth, both extremes are really full-time investors just simply different styles. When I look at my style of investing it identifies much more closely with the Terry Smith style than the active trader style wanting to make a fast buck and exit the position before moving onto the next trade. With style in mind, the style of my investing rather than by usual laid-back attire of the summer months, sandals & shorts, I thought I would write a few notes of the typical day in the life of a whittling investor: Well getting up and out of bed in the morning has always been easy for me. The only period in my life where I have struggled with this was in my early 20’s when I suffered “Sunday migraines” but later found that was beer related. I usually get up at about 6am and find myself in front of the screen by around 6:30 then go through my diary of planned RNS announcements expected that day and also every few days, do a quick run to see if any new opportunities have been identified in my investment universe (see blog dated 24th April 2016). Then with a nice cup of coffee at hand, as 7:00am arrives, I open up Investigate to scan the days RNS’s of interest to me. I have a preset list of “my list” within Investigate that should if all goes well, immediately flag up any RNS for a company that I have shares in. Then, of course, we could spend some time sifting through every word in an RNS or as I do, use word & phrase highlighting tools. The first highlighter I used a few years back was the one on ADVFN. This works fine but you are limited to 20 phrase boxes, see below: The next one I moved onto was within Firefox using their phrase highlighter add-on. You have to remember to switch it on and off otherwise, it will highlight those nominated words and phrases from any web-site you visit and that can be a bit of a pain. Finally, I settled for one that works on both Chrome and my preferred browser, Opera. The one that really does the trick for me is Pearls extension and the really clever thing is that it is web-site specific. I have mine set just for Investigate: An actual Pearls example for a Norcros trading update from July 2016 is given below: Using these highlighter tools enables me to quickly rattle through any RNS of interest and take a preliminary view of what action I may take for example if I see a profits warning I almost invariably sell at market open but this can be a pain as it delays my daily swim. Oh yes, I then send out a few tweets and where appropriate declare whatever interest I hold in the company. So assuming there is nothing overly worrying identified, I am off to the pool for a quick mile returning for a plate of porridge and blueberries at about 9:15; I did read that blueberries are supposed to stimulate the brain, so why not.
Then over breakfast it’s a question of pondering over what Mr Market makes of things and finishing the working day by about 10am; I quite like this lifestyle. Occasionally the day will drift on a little longer if any stocks are identified from the screens that I run on SharePad. Then the process of more in-depth research starts. Just one more check and that’s at the end of the day when I check to see how things closed off on Sharescope. Personally, it’s a lifestyle that fits well with my personality and I only wish I had made the move away from paid employment many years ago but the opportunity was not always there. Let’s see what tomorrow brings! Happy investing!
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Welcome to my Blog Page - I hope you find my whittling on to be of some interest. I am a private investor who is happy to share thoughts on the market and individual stocks. Please remember that I am definitely not offering tips or investment advice. Archives
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