"Investor Finn" Sunday Business Post

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NotMyRealName

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I came across a promo for this on the David McWilliams podcast ( I usually skip the ads) . It's a Sunday Business Post experiment....behind a paywall for me...which might be better synopsised by another contributor who can type faster !!!!
Anyway there's a link attached here. I'm obviously not promoting this but there's no other discussion on AAM about it ,that I can find .
A discussion about this may be interesting, from an investment, taxation , etc point of view.
Read the blurb, I suppose, and discuss.
Around 20 years ago I recall doing something similar through the Indo with Goodbodys? Maybe ?
Anyway that one encouraged others to get involved with a fee-less 5k investment ( for the first 1000 investors? I think) As I recall it was for 1 year only and returned around 18% I think? No idea what a passive index would've done in comparison.
Anyway , I digress, Gemini can't inform me about "Investor Finn" either, as it's probably unable to see beyond the paywall.
www.businesspost.ie

I’m Investor Finn and I want €1m - allow me to introduce myself

www.businesspost.ie www.businesspost.ie
 
To hit my goal of around €1 million by the middle of 2050s, I’ve worked out I’ll need a pre-tax annual rate of return of around 12.5 per cent. That will be a key goal.

And I’ve decided that part of my focus will be investing in the Irish stock market and companies with an Irish interest that are listed in America or England.
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Chasing higher returns and a focus on Irish shares. What could possibly go wrong?
 
I’m currently about midway through my career and have so far done ok for myself, with a decent pension and a mortgage.
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I presume that this implies that they've maximised their tax relieved pension contributions, to a pension with low charges, that is invested in a suitable asset mix (e.g. low charges diversified passive index tracker), and are maybe in a job which offers generous employer pension contributions as part of their remuneration package?

But it would be better for readers if the importance of a pension in targeting €1M (or whatever) at retirement was made much more explicit in my opinion. Instead the focus seems to be on non-pension savings/investments.

The text also has a bit of an AI generated feel to me but maybe I'm wrong...
 
Seems like an excellent project to me, and a great approach to investing.

I particularly like, "I’ll be as transparent as possible with my investments. Keep in mind that I am a novice. I’ll document here the rationale for my decisions and their results - win or lose."

and "Each investment made by Finn has a central thesis - he will explain why he is buying the stock." Every stockpicker should do this carefully even if they necer share it with anyone.

Like the above this "When Finn sees he has made a wrong decision, he will admit it to himself and sell the company's shares. This will be an opportunity for reflection. What went wrong? How can he avoid the same mistake?" is an excellent approach.

The focus on Irish stocks is unrealistic, but as an Irish newspaper understandable.
 
NotMyRealName said:
.behind a paywall for me
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Not paywalled for me.

I agree with @cremeegg, taken from the point of view of a novice investor, it's a good experiment. For the sake of educational purposes, I hope they repeat the same kind of investment many of us naively made, such as investing in big-name (already grown) stocks, not diversifying, investing too much in crypto, etc. etc.

To hit my goal of around €1 million by the middle of 2050s, I’ve worked out I’ll need a pre-tax annual rate of return of around 12.5 per cent. That will be a key goal.

And I’ve decided that part of my focus will be investing in the Irish stock market and companies with an Irish interest that are listed in America or England.
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S&P 500 annualized rate of return, pre-tax, dividends reinvested:
USD returnin EUR unhedged
20 years11.4%–11.6% per year11%–11.3% per year
30 years10.8–11.0% per year
10.2–10.6% per year

(About these numbers, the periods covers a lot of boom and bust, and currency exchange fluctuations largely even out over the period.)

Anyway, good luck with 12.5 and good luck again with Irish stocks!

Personally, if I was guiding a novice, I'd say put it all in one or two trackers of global or USD stock, potentially hedged in EUR (depending on cost of hedging), and forget about it. This is with the benefit of a lot of mistakes over the years, one being investing too heavily in Irish stocks!
 
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As I'm pay-wall excluded, a few ??s maybe someone could answer??
Since Jan. How's Finn doing ? How's he doing V an all-world index? How is Finn set up to trade? and with whom? how 'bout fees ? Any of this explained?
 
NotMyRealName said:
How's Finn doing ? How's he doing V an all-world index? How is Finn set up to trade? and with whom? how 'bout fees ? Any of this explained?
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None of that seems to be detailed as far as I can see. Maybe it's too early?

Edit: maybe such information is contained in the newsletter/update posts? You can subscribe here:
signup.businesspost.ie

Investor Finn - Business Post

Follow Investor Finn's journey to learn how an investor navigates the ups and down of the stock market delivered to your inbox every week.
signup.businesspost.ie signup.businesspost.ie
The exercise sounds a little like what @Colm Fagan has been doing here, except that he's already in retirement?

Performance Update for Colm Fagan's ARF

In response to popular demand, e.g., Good to see you back Colm... I appreciate your insights on investing. As we approach the end of the trading year how did your investments survive volatile period we all have experienced here, for @Bluefin and others, is an update on the performance of my...
www.askaboutmoney.com
 
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Hello, allow me to introduce myself - I’m Investor Finn.

I’m a character created and written by a team of journalists at the Business Post.

And I’ve decided that part of my focus will be investing in the Irish stock market and companies with an Irish interest that are listed in America or England.

I won’t shy away from international investments and funds either.

Will money be added to the portfolio?​

Investor Finn has €30,000. No money additional to that will be added to the portfolio. However, in cases of dividend-paying stocks, the dividends will be re-invested by Finn.

My Estonian counterpart Investor Toomas, a creation of the Business Post's sister publication there, Aripaev, started investing in the markets in 2002 with €50,000, which has since grown to almost €800,000.

Soon I’ll introduce you to Lukas, in Lithuania, Andris in Latvia, Maks in Slovenia and Wojtek in Poland.
 
it's obviously popular in other countries where the owners of the SBP own newspapers.

it's completely unrepresentative of any actual situation

No one says "I have €30k now and I won't be adding to it but I will need to turn it into €1m by the mid 2050s so I can retire on it"

You cannot tell if an investor can beat the market consistently until you have at least 20 years of data.
As this is written by a team, that team will be changing.

So if it does brilliantly over the next year or 5 years, it will mean nothing.
If it does terribly, it will mean nothing
 
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Brendan Burgess said:
started investing in the markets in 2002 with €50,000, which has since grown to almost €800,000.
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That's an annualized rate of return approx 12.25%. That slightly beats the S&P index I listed above. Pretty good for a "novice" stock picker. I suggest that the average novice will achieve nothing like that in a real-world scenario. AIB and BOI would have been attractive stocks for most Irish stock pickers in 2002 and look where that ended up.
 
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MarketApprox. annualized total return (20 years), dividends reinvested
Irish market (ISEQ 20 GR)≈5–6%
Euro Stoxx 50≈7–9%
S&P 500 (USD)≈10–11%
 
Brendan Burgess said:
it's completely unrepresentative of any actual situation
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I cannot see why you say that.

Many Irish people have that kind of money in deposit accounts. Mostly what stops them investing in equities is lack of knowledge and fear of the unknown. It seems a broadly typical possible scenario for many people.
 
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The focus on Irish shares is regrettable, but as it is an Irish newspaper that is understandable, and besides if you like to tyre kick your investment choices, that is more easily done with Irish companies.



And hey we like to discuss all things Irish

DCC buyout offer rejected

https://m.independent.ie/business/irish/irish-energy-distributor-dcc-knocks-back-takeover-bid-that-undervalues-the-business/a937293066.html Very interesting whats going on with boring old DCC. They have been undervalued for years and now a private equity outfit from US has offered to buy them...
www.askaboutmoney.com
 
The latest (first?) email...
A stock that's just too high

Hi there,

The chip stock panic that seems to crop up every few weeks has me wondering if one of the older hands is a safer bet than the new names.

I took a deeper look at Intel because I'm more familiar with it than others, and it's in the news more often here because it's such a big employer.

What I found was a company that's been flying this year after a restructuring and is on course to capitalise from the AI boom, while maintaining a strong position in other chips.

Just one problem, it is way too expensive.

Looking at the company's earnings compared to the price of the share, and the fact its going to spend billions to stay in the AI race - it doesn't look like there's much room for share growth.

Click here to read the figures I used to analyse the stock and learn how I'm going to look at my next picks.

Happy investing,
Finn
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The chip stock panic that seems to crop up every few weeks has me wondering if one of the older hands is a safer bet than the new names.

I took a deeper look at Intel because I'm more familiar with it than others, and it's in the news more often here because it's such a big employer.
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Wouldn't someone in the SBP point out to readers that stock picking - especially by a novice - is simply a BAD IDEA?
Many of us learnt the hard way that diversification is the key to a relatively worry-free portfolio - and now simply invest in market trackers.
 
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