Your 7-Minute Guide to Making Better Investment Decisions

Give it a try.

Peter Drucker always years ahead

I have always been an avid reader of anything written by Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005). His ideas on business and management have always been way ahead of everybody.

At least once a year I read an article he wrote called Managing Oneself which is a small part of his book excellent book Management Challenges for the 21st Century.

In the article Peter describes a technique on how to discover your strengths through the use of feedback analysis.

Use it to improve investment decisions

And you can use this technique to evaluate and make better investment decisions.

Here is how.

Every time you make an investment write down the answers to the following three questions:

1. What is my reason for buying?
2. What is the security worth?
3. How did I calculate this value?

Don’t write a long essay just one or two lines.

The longer the reason for buying (the more complex the investment case) is the lower my returns usually are. The simplest investments ideas are usually the most compelling and profitable.

When you review the investment, after a price decline or receipt of new information, look at your reason for buying. If the reason is no longer valid I suggest you sell.

Also after selling an investment refer back to your purchase decision and add the return on the investment (in total and per year) as well as your reason for selling. Every six months or so compare your decisions with the results.

Be careful, a profit does not automatically mean you made a good decision.

A good decision is one where the reasoning behind the decision was correct. Was your thinking process that led you to the buy decision correct?

For example a profit made through a completely unexpected buy-out of the company would not equal a good decision whereas buying because you thought a security is undervalued and then profiting from a buyout would be a good decision (the undervaluation made the company an attractive buy-out candidate).

Give it a try, you will be surprised at what you find.

Here is for example what I found:

• I am a bad coat-tail investor i.e. buying a stock because someone else bought it. I feel uncomfortable holding the investment and tend to make bad sell decisions. Either too soon or too late, after a gain has disappeared.

• Also, if I do too much analysis on an idea I lose my objectivity. I tend to fall in love with the company and tend to see price declines as a reason to keep on buying. Something that has cost me dearly.

That said I am still not 100% sure what my correct amount of research is. But I am sure I am moving in the right direction. Using check-lists as I described in the article What does your checklist look like? was a step in the right direction for me.

I also add securities I have sold to a virtual portfolio as I realised that I often sell investments too soon. I review this “sold” portfolio every six months to see if I made a good sell decisions. I do this for only up to a year after the investment has left my portfolio as thereafter the investment case may have changed and I have stopped following the company.

This has helped my returns a lot as it has, objectively, confirmed my mistake of not letting winners run.

Summary and conclusion

You make hundreds of decisions every day, some more important than others. If the quality of your big decision can be improved, even only slightly, it will make a huge difference in your life.

This is of course also true of your investment decisions.

Put a system in place to improve your decision making. It will make a big difference in your life, sooner than you expect.

Your decision analyst