Are we really going to study stocks this deep?

I got a comment on IG:

I hear this all the time, but it does perplex me.

The answer is yes: I really do think people are going to study stocks this deeply if they want to invest in single companies.

Otherwise, what the hell are you doing? If you're going to invest in something, then you need to know what it's worth.

The only way you can figure out what something is worth is by doing a lot of work. You can't have your cake and eat it too. There are no shortcuts in intelligent investing.

Otherwise, you're just gambling, and you should expect substandard performance.

When I talk to new investors, I see this trend all the time: they buy something near all-time highs, and then it goes down 20% or 30%. They sell and think the market is rigged.

The market isn't rigged. You just didn't do your homework, and you paid the suckers' price.

Whereas an intelligent investor knows what something is worth before they buy it, and then, if the price goes down, they get excited and may even buy more

From my pari-mutuel post, you can probably see where this is going.

The number one skill in investing is patience. As Buffett says, this is a no-called-strikes baseball game. We can let 300 pitches go by, and when we realize the fat pitch is right in our hit box and we can knock it out of the park, we swing.

I think I've researched maybe 20 or 30 companies this year, and I've only bought one or two. The market is at historically high valuations. Good deals are rare to find right now.

Oh my goodness, I have a backlog of companies I would be very excited to buy if their stock went down a good amount.

Every single day, I'm working to add to that list, hunt for new opportunities, and find what's trading below its intrinsic value. I will wait patiently until it gets to a price I like, and then I'll make my move.

Also, this commenter is right about most people. Most people probably don't want to do the work and should just buy the index, but that's not what Flank is for.

Flank is for people who want to do the work and want to share it with each other so we build our knowledge together and flank the market for outsized returns.