Ten bagger

[copyright1997reloaded]

Apple basis $1.40 (bought in 2001), so 252 times.
LLTC (bought in 1990), acquired by ADI (still hold some), 137x.
Marriott (bought in 1990 @ 2.62), now 102 so 38x. This one has been a wild ride because of Covid.
Edwards LifeSciences (spinoff from Baxter), $0.67 cost basis, now $73.28, so 109X
Baxter itself (bought in 1989), $5.92 basis, now $86.84, so 14.6x.
CAH (via BAX spinoff that they bought), 36X

I also have several in mid single digits, for example
MSFT: 6X
HON: 6X
SYK: 5X
ABT: 4.6X
ABBV: 4.5X

I have had some other winners long gone, such as Stryker in the 80's (finally bought it back in 2008), UpJohn, Warner Lambert.

On the other hand (to offset the gloating above) I managed to LOSE money both on Facebook and Netflix. Quite an amazing feat given what they've done but I did it! But I am thankful that some of the above have more than offset not so good holdings elsewhere.

 

[Car-Guy]

No 10 baggers in a long time but I've had several 2 and 3 baggers this year alone. Not bad for 1, 2 and a few 3 month buys and sells.

 

[Luvdogs]

HD. Bought in 1987, scraped together $ since we had just bought our house. Bought either 20 shares at $30 or 30 shares at $20. Kept buying and it kept splitting. Sold a bunch around 1995 because I thought the market would crash just because the Dow hit 5000. (What did I know). Still have some but would a ton more and could have retired a lot earlier if I hadn't sold.

And who to "blame" for buying this stock?

My cat.

She peed on my carpet in my prior place because she didn't like my boyfriend/DH. So we went to HD and we replaced it with tile. And kept going back for other stuff. And noticed that the parking lot was packed on Saturday morning. So I bought the stock.

 

[bolt]

FWIW I'd certainly suggest reading "Ten Baggers: stocks that returned 10X" by Cris Mayer.
IMO: It's an outstanding, contemporaneous literary template of numerous 10bagger's recorded in the last 50yrs.
Every time I look through it I discover something*new to consider.

Good luck & Best wishes!

See what the net’s 10x hysteria’s done to you bolt!
THE BOOKS is called 100BAGGERS knucklehead
Yes, 100BAGGERS folks.
Good luck!

 

[lordjust]

NVDA is like a 37x for me. I paid $10 for it in like 2009 or 2010, I think.

I’m jealous. I sold mine last year. Keep thinking about getting back in because they have great products.

 

[Luck_Club]

NVAX- november 2019 to mayish 2020.

 

[4nursebee]

OK, I'll bite, How the Heck do you choose these companies so well people?

Good jobs!

 

[atmsmshr]

The only individual stock I have ever owned is NextEra, formally FPL. Held inside 401k company match. Starting in 1986, the stock is up around 20 fold, inclusive of a stock split. An amazing pile of capital gains. (Just lucky)

Future investing will likely stay as an index or sector investor.

Unless I get the urge to buy Hertz stock or some Chinese listed NASDAQ company like so many "investors" are doing lately.

 

[tdv2]

OK, I'll bite, How the Heck do you choose these companies so well people?

Good jobs!

Lucky guess....if it was skill, we would all own a private island. What you don't hear about in a thread like this is the ones that didn't work out....instead of 10X how about 1/10X. Telab calls this "silent evidence". One of the dangers is "survivorship bias" which can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored.

 

[OldShooter]

Lucky guess....if it was skill, we would all own a private island. What you don't hear about in a thread like this is the ones that didn't work out....instead of 10X how about 1/10X. Telab calls this "silent evidence". One of the dangers is "survivorship bias" which can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored.

+100

 

[Fermion]

I didn't hold it that long, but Seadrill was a negative 3 bagger for me. For some it could easily be a negative 100 bagger.

 

[brokrken]

I’m jealous. I sold mine last year. Keep thinking about getting back in because they have great products.

I don't know that I'll ever sell it

 

[brokrken]

OK, I'll bite, How the Heck do you choose these companies so well people?

Good jobs!

It seems that most people that have 10x or more have held the stock for a really long time, in some cases decades. I also have some 4x-8x that I've held for 5-10 years, but I haven't been in the market since the 80's and 90's like some here

 

[brokrken]

Lucky guess....if it was skill, we would all own a private island. What you don't hear about in a thread like this is the ones that didn't work out....instead of 10X how about 1/10X. Telab calls this "silent evidence". One of the dangers is "survivorship bias" which can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored.

I'll bite on this one. DVN, GLOP, HAL, OXY, SAN are all down 50%-75% for me. Haven't had one go BK on me yet, but hey, you never know

 

[braumeister]

I didn't hold it that long, but Seadrill was a negative 3 bagger for me. For some it could easily be a negative 100 bagger.

One of the few advantages of being conservative is that I get anxious when things go extremely well, and sell before they hit their peak.

I made good money on my small Seadrill position back then. Same with Enron. Getting out before the top has generally worked for me.

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

Lucky guess....if it was skill, we would all own a private island. What you don't hear about in a thread like this is the ones that didn't work out....instead of 10X how about 1/10X. Telab calls this "silent evidence". One of the dangers is "survivorship bias" which can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored.

While your statement about "silent evidence" and "survivorship bias" is certainly true, I think there is more to it than just lucky guesses. Repectfully, I did list two I lost money on (Facebook and NetFlix), which interestingly enough were not typical investments for me.

If you look at the list of winners I posted (Apple, Edwards Life Sciences, Linear Technology, Marriott, Baxter, Microsoft, Honeywell, Stryker, Abbott/Abbv), you will find some common theme's:
1) For each and every one them, I did not buy a high flyer. All were profitable concerns when I purchased them (even Stryker when I initially bought it shortly after it's IPO).
2) None of them had outrageous PE ratios or Price to Sales ratios.
3) All of them had (at least at the time) conservative finances in terms of debt and debt levels.
4) All of them (except perhaps for Honeywell) play on what has been my single stock investment theme - pick well run companies in industries that can benefit from technological advances and/or the aging of America.

I also can personally attest to another "interesting" thing I've seen in my own investing. ALL of the above are in non-tax-deferred accounts. I have NOT done as well in IRA or ROTH accounts. I think I understand the "why" for that: In my non-tax-deferred accounts, I am fairly quick to prune losers - if my thesis for investing isn't playing out, sell it. My observations of my past investments tells me the only place where I have waited too long (and gotten a bigger loss) is in my IRA/ROTH where the selling of a loser doesn't have tax advantages. This is a issue with my investing that I am trying to overcome. I also tend to sell winners too quickly in my IRA/ROTH (for the same reason, no tax consequences in selling). But overall, I have had very few big time losers (e.g. 1/10, 1/4) - and certainly not in terms of a large cost of investment capital. (I think my biggest loser was Chesapeake Holdings - most of which I sold long ago but I had a small position in one of my IRA accounts).

One other thing - these are long term holdings. Apple from 2001, Baxter since 1989, Marriott 1990, Stryker since 2008 (and originally from 1980 or so), and so on. The idea here is to KEEP WINNERS and allow compound growth to help my returns.

 

[kcowan]

Apple 2600% unrealized gains
Lulu 1600% unrealized gains

Sold all of Apple once and bought back half when it swooned by 33%, still holding.
Jones Soda bought 0.66 and sold 9.7 for 1470%
Several others back in my trading days.

Mostly by and hold now. Just some AA adjustments but still holding overinvested sectors. Worst hold, NFI buy $41k held at $255K now $106K. Paper losses!

 

[brokrken]

Worst hold, NFI buy $41k held at $255K now $106K. Paper losses!

Still up 150%+!!

 

[Luck_Club]

Lucky guess....if it was skill, we would all own a private island. What you don't hear about in a thread like this is the ones that didn't work out....instead of 10X how about 1/10X. Telab calls this "silent evidence". One of the dangers is "survivorship bias" which can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored.

Glad to share:
FOOD Apx $2000 to $0
Evergreen Solar $1740 to $0
DT Industries $2000 to $0

In the case of DT Industries I knew the company well, and they are still in operation doing the same thing, with the same equipment under a different name.

 

[OldShooter]

One of the interesting things I learned from Jason Zweig's "Your Money & Your Brain" is that our brain rewards us with dopamine when we win a bet, but not when we lose. After some successes we even get dopamine shots when the opportunity to gamble arises. All this neurochemistry causes us to remember the wins. We don't remember the losers nearly as well. So the result is that when we look back, our memory is biased. I can remember some very pleasing wins from back in the Bad Old Days when I was trading, but I don't remember any real losers.

The academic research attempting to identify a "skill" component in winners' results has failed AFIK. Here is Kenneth French talking about his and Eugene Fama's attempts to identify skill in thousands of fund managers' results: https://famafrench.dimensional.com/videos/identifying-superior-managers.aspx This involves slightly different problems than looking strictly at individual investors, but I think his conclusion that results can't be distinguished from random is germane. That is not to say that some individual investors won't get lucky, just as some fund managers get lucky, Guaranteed some will. But that doesn't disprove the research results.

 

[Montecfo]

Being an analyst, I identified the two I noted, AAPL and ADI because they were cheap and in my view represented growth at a reasonable price (GARP).

I usually sell a stock when it becomes fully valued in my estimation, but these both remained good value over the time horizon (though I have traded additional positions in AAPL).

I own both currently but was out of ADI for 8-10 years.

 

[bolt]

See what the net’s 10x hysteria’s done to you bolt!
THE BOOKS is called 100BAGGERS knucklehead
Yes, 100BAGGERS folks.
Good luck!

I opened the 100X Baggers book again. Data started in 1962 or later, to 2014 or earlier. It also cited that HD, BIIB, Questcor, Nexstar, Abbvie & Valeant Pharma all did over 100X in or about a cherrypicked 5yrs.

100X
However, book cites BRK.A did 19,000ishX(1965-2014ish), trumping Altrias 12,000ishX as second best LT returns noted with-in above timeline.

I have to read this book again, its a quick read.

Good luck & Best wishes!

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

All this neurochemistry causes us to remember the wins. We don't remember the losers nearly as well. So the result is that when we look back, our memory is biased. I can remember some very pleasing wins from back in the Bad Old Days when I was trading, but I don't remember any real losers.

This is the reason I keep a log, and for the most part I don't "trade".

 

[bolt]

One of the interesting things I learned from Jason Zweig's "Your Money & Your Brain" is that our brain rewards us with dopamine when we win a bet, but not when we lose. After some successes we even get dopamine shots when the opportunity to gamble arises. All this neurochemistry causes us to remember the wins. We don't remember the losers nearly as well. So the result is that when we look back, our memory is biased. I can remember some very pleasing wins from back in the Bad Old Days when I was trading, but I don't remember any real losers.

The academic research attempting to identify a "skill" component in winners' results has failed AFIK. Here is Kenneth French talking about his and Eugene Fama's attempts to identify skill in thousands of fund managers' results: https://famafrench.dimensional.com/videos/identifying-superior-managers.aspx This involves slightly different problems than looking strictly at individual investors, but I think his conclusion that results can't be distinguished from random is germane. That is not to say that some individual investors won't get lucky, just as some fund managers get lucky, Guaranteed some will. But that doesn't disprove the research results.

I understand it differently. However I do recognize your point.

I understood that behavioral economics suggests, afaik.
That loss aversion is an important concept associated with prospect theory and is encapsulated in the expression “losses loom larger than gains” (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979).
It is thought that the pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. People are more willing to take risks (or behave dishonestly; e.g. Schindler & Pfattheicher, 2016) to avoid a loss than to make a gain. Loss aversion has been used to explain the endowment effect and sunk cost fallacy, and it may also play a role in the status quo bias.

As is known: Everyones different!

Good luck & Best wishes...

 

[brewer12345]

AAPL is a tea bagger?