The first stock I ever bought
My first stock was the NTPC IPO.
A stockbroker friend told me to subscribe. I nodded like I knew what subscribing meant. I did not.
I had no idea what NTPC did beyond “power.” I had no idea what made this IPO different from any other. I bought because my friend said to buy. Then I forgot I owned it.
Months later, I checked. A modest gain.
I felt like a genius for forty-five seconds. Then I told myself I had figured it out.
I had not figured it out
I had been lucky.
For the next several years, I chased that feeling. Other friends. Other tips. Other articles. I lost money. I made money. I traded my way through a decade and learned almost nothing.
Twenty years in, I am still that guy
Not the lucky-genius version. The other one.
The one who still does not know what subscribing to an IPO really means until he sits down and reads. The one who has to ask the basic question before the smart one. The one who opens a fresh annual report and feels like he is starting on page one.
That is the whole secret.
Shoshin. The beginner mind.
A Japanese idea. The empty cup receives. The full cup spills.
I came to it through Stoicism, not Zen. Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations only to himself.
A beginner inside his own head, reminding himself of things he would forget by morning.
Epictetus said the first task of the learner is to drop the conceit of already knowing.
For ten years, I was conceited. Quietly.
I skimmed an article and felt I understood the company. I borrowed someone else’s conviction and pretended it was mine.
When I lost money, it did not feel like punishment. It felt like a puzzle I should have solved.
The pivot was slow
There was no single day.
There was a long, slow giving-up of the act. The day I stopped pretending I had graduated from beginner was the day my returns got serious.
While I was performing expertise, I was a tourist with confidence.
The moment I let myself ask basic questions in public, take notes like a student, and accept that I would never be done learning, I started keeping the right things and ignoring the rest.
Tesla, 2019
The first stock I bought because of something I had read, not because someone had told me to.
Tesla was unpopular on finance Twitter. Ridiculed in the press. I did not buy because I was contrarian. I bought because I had spent months learning the basics. How Tesla made money. How it was building factories. What the actual bet was.
I knew nothing fancy. I knew what a curious fifth-grader could have known after six months of reading.
Why I held
The position was brutal in stretches. It dropped. It ran. It dropped again.
I did not hold because I was brave.
I held because my conviction had a source I could point to.
When the noise got loud, I went back to the basic argument. Most days, nothing fundamental had changed. So I held.
What that mindset returned
Tesla: up more than 10x.
Palantir, where I did the same patient amateur work after the listing: up more than 20x.
Bitcoin, which I had to overcome more skepticism to own: up more than 40x.
I am not telling you those numbers to impress you. I am telling you because they were not the product of expertise. They were the product of learning slowly, in plain language, and then doing nothing for years while the noise screamed.
What learning every day actually looks like
Small. Embarrassingly small.
Thirty minutes most mornings before work. Usually an annual report, a shareholder letter, a book chapter, or a piece from someone I trust.
A notebook where I write down what I do not understand. I revisit it weekly. I ask questions that would embarrass a more sophisticated investor.
That is the whole practice. There is no hidden tier of knowledge I am keeping from you.
The reframe
“I do not know enough” is not a problem. It is the most useful sentence an investor can carry.
It keeps you from acting on tips you cannot defend.
It makes you read more.
It makes you sit on your hands when sitting is the right move.
It is the sentence that compounds, alongside your portfolio, for the rest of your life.
So
I am a beginner. I always will be. So are you, if you are honest.
Let us learn together.
Before you go
If this letter felt like a friend told you the truth, you are exactly the reader I am writing for.
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One last question. What is the one thing about investing you have been quietly pretending to understand? Hit reply. I read everything.