Why You Should Never Follow Any List Of Stock Recommendations, Including Mine.

The original title of this post was supposed to be, “How to choose the best stocks.” But I wanted to make it sound very urgent, hence the new title.

If you’re one of my “older” email followers, you should’ve noticed that I’ve already stopped sending stock picks and recommendations. It was not to leave you hanging. Instead, I tried to teach how you could become independent. That’s probably the best decision I’ve ever made in this blog’s life.

And as usual, I’m going out of the norm again telling you that you should never.. I repeat.. NEVER follow ANY stock recommendation. And that includes mine (as if I’m still sending them).

Why this is an urgent concern.

Since my email followers are mostly (if not all of them) beginners, it’s just natural for them to ask my recommended stocks. But rather than giving them recommendations, I give my insights on a particular stock. So far, it has worked for them. And at the end, they’re the ones who make their own decision.

But there are a lot of things happening in the stock market more than the price action. There are tender offers, merging, IPOs (initial public offering), companies getting delisted, stock splits, and many more. These are on top of the challenges that some companies are experiencing, (like EDC’s shut down of the Bacman plant).

Because of that, my followers’ new found confidence start to flush down the drain. Suddenly, they don’t know what to do with their stock anymore. They ask questions like these (but are not limited to):

“What should I do with stock-x? I’m already losing 10% (or whatever amount).”
“What do you think of stock-x? The price is rising like crazy. Is it ok to participate?”
“Why are you not invested in stock-x? Is it not a great company?”

At first, only a few followers ask me about it. But lately, I’ve been getting a lot of them.

To my email followers, I strongly encourage you to ask more of these questions so that they can be addressed. After all, I answer all of them. So the only wrong question is the one you’ll never ask.

Why some most people follow (and pay) for stock recommendations.

People don’t want to be accountable.
If you’re in a corporate world, there’s this thing called “transferring the risk”. Do do that, companies hire a third party. Example, if your supplies need to be delivered from one place to another. Instead of delivering them on your own, you hire (and pay) someone to do it for you. Pag may nangyari sa supplies mo, may masisisi ka. Tama?

Sadly, people like these flock the stock market world. They just make the because-I’m-only-a-beginner excuse. Hindi ko naman nilalahat. That was just my observation. (Break: I was actually surprised to find out that many TRC members were very mad at Bo when he recommended to sell CEB at a lot of loss).

My friends, making mistakes is part investing in the stock market. Even your so-called mentors make mistakes. Everyone is entitled to it. Of course you lose money in the process. I say you use it as a motivation to gain it back, if not more.

Remember: Unaccountability is one ingredient for you to fail in the stock market.

Why I recommend you to never follow them.

The disclaimer.
Most, if not all services have disclaimers. In the stock market’s case, a disclaimer is a clause where the mentor is waived of the responsibilities in case losses are incurred to his clients because of the services that he/she gives. ‘Pag nalugi ka, wala kang habol at wala kang laban! That alone should already ring a bell for you.

Imagine yourself paying for a stock market mentor who will never be liable in case they’re wrong.

They don’t solve the problem.
For my long time readers, I hope you already know the major problem that this blog wishes to solve – the increasing number of investors who want to be (please allow me to be brutally honest)… wait for it… spoon-fed.

If you notice, most of these recommendations only give you a list but fail to give the thesis behind it. In short, they don’t teach you. That’s perfectly okay because that’s how mentors get their paycheck. Nothing personal, just business.

Anyway, back to the problem. Lack of spoons is not the problem. Hence, increasing the number of spoons won’t solve the problem. Kung hindi ka pa marunong kumain, ‘wag kang humanap ng magsususbo sa ‘yo. Humanap ka ng magtuturo sa ‘yo kung paano kumain. It doesn’t rhyme but I hope I got the message across.

You should be picking your own!!!
This is the solution to the problem I mentioned earlier. If you won’t follow any recommendation, then you must make your own recommendation for you. I know it’s a bit scary at first, but you at least have to try.

I’m sure you drowned first before you learned how to swim.
I’m sure you had bruises when you first rode a bike, then tripped.
I’m sure you were dead scared when you first drove the freeway.
I’m sure… I’m sure you get the point.

Be accountable and answer to no one but yourself.

How can you come up with your own picks?

Now THAT is the million dollar question. This is where I come in. I going to teach you how you can come up with your own stock picks that suits your personality (fear, greed and risk appetite).

But there’s a catch.

I will be sending out the copy only to my mailing list. If you’re a newcomer, don’t be disheartened. I haven’t started with the post yet, but I already have a structure in mind. If you want to receive it, you just have to subscribe to my mailing list.

Why give it only to my email subscribers?

This is serious stuff.
Look, people pay for this kind of stuff. For most of them, a stock recommendation (specially from the truly rich club) is the holy grail. TRC earns millions of pesos every month by sending this, and I’m going to teach you how to come up with something similar at no charge.I want this stuff to be in the hands of people who are very serious to respond to my call to action. Pwede ‘nyo ito pagkakitaan ‘noh!

For the next points, please allow me to be a little bit melodramatic.

My email subscribers are loyal readers.
I know there may be some loyal readers that are not subscribed, but I’m sure most loyal readers are part of my mailing list. People landing on your page is one thing. But for them to return is another story.

In fact, most of them are already very good when it comes to investing in the stock market, yet they still care to read every new post that I publish.

My email subscribers are engaged readers.
I love leaving comments to other blogs, so there’s no surprise that I love to have them on my own page. What I love most about my readers’ comments are they’re don’t just leave “Nice post!” or “Great article!”. They give their views, questions and opinions that would benefit new readers. Sometimes, their comments make a better “post” than the article itself. Good job readers!

Some of them may not look engaged in the comments section. But they actually send their comments to me thru email. Though I’d still encourage them to leave it in the comments section. Remember, those comments benefit not only me, but also new comers.

My mailing list is the life of my blog.
Think about it,
even if Google would put my blog at the 1,000th page of its search
results, my blog will still survive. With just one email, my traffic
would spike up because they care for what I say. Frankly, Google only
gives roughly 11% of my total traffic. I gain huge readership through
referrals from my mailing list.

GROUP HUG!

I’d like to ask a small favor.

If you’ll allow, please share this post in any social media. I strongly feel that this is by far the best and most beneficial post (specially to beginners) I’ve published to date. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t mind if you won’t share 🙂

Closing.

I hope I had everyone thinking (but not confused) again, and would consider switching to the “dark side”. I was actually saving this for my future post, but the situation calls for it already.

Anyway, usually I would ask you something about the topic and leave them in the comments, but I can’t think of something right now. So just leave whatever you want to share in the comments section.