Winning the battle, losing the war

I have tweaked my approach in the last few years. An outcome is higher number of transactions and re-entering the same position even though it did not work the first time. This is not about being proven right, but buying a stock if the probabilities are favorable, even if it did not work the first time
This gives an impression of flip flopping to my subscribers. I wrote the following note in response to that.
Winning the battle, losing the war
I have been fixated on the success of each position for a long time. This is a very common mindset among all investors. Although, everyone knows that it’s the portfolio returns that count, we get hung up on each holding
My guess is that some of this comes from our schooling, where we were graded on each question and the final score was a total of individual marks. It does not work that way in life and Investing
For example, if you hold 10 stocks in your portfolio and one stock goes up 10X and the rest drop by 50% before you liquidate your entire portfolio, you have made 45% on your portfolio
Is this hypothetical? Not in the venture capital world where one position can go up 100X and the rest can go to 0. Public market portfolios behave in the same manner.
Most of our alpha have come from a handful of positions
If this is the reality, it leads to a few logical actions

We should not chase a high hit rate. A less than 50% success rate is fine as long as we manage the downside risk. Portfolio management is not an entrance exam
The key is to get a few positions right and make the most of it. If that means, re-entering the same positions several times, so be it. Did it matter we lost 20% on Neuland labs before making 150% on it. The other downside of this approach is higher number of transactions
We will appear to flip flop and regularly change our mind. We will hold our position only if the company gives us reasons to do so. Each position has to earn its place

Disclaimer

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