Building accountability in my investments

Early this year I started posting some of my investment ideas to this sub. I started doing this in part as a way to share ideas and generate discussion.

It's also served an interesting purpose for myself. I like having a written record of my thoughts and thesis on stocks I research. It allows me to go back and check my thoughts and my thought process. I think it's been helpful in building some investing confidence too.

This isn't to toot my own horn. It's only been 5 months, but I was spectacularly wrong on WAL (so far at least). Also JOUT hasn't really played out (yet). I do think it's a good idea to write down thoughts, and go back to check on on them. Be critical on yourself. If you find where you made a mistake, learn from it.

The two biggest things I've learned:

1) don't complicate things. My best investments so far have just been under the thesis "the market is not pricing in long term growth". And underestimating it by a lot. Simple EPS growth models can do this without a ton of math. Again, it should be obvious before you invest, so you don't need to be super precise.

2) learn to trust yourself. This is where a written record is helpful. Go back and find when your thoughts were correct. You might find that it happens more than you think.

Anyway, I hope more people will post publicly. It is great to see other thoughts and ideas and I hope we can get better together.