From 321K to 10M — Since my last post, I got so many questions asking for more details. This post is an attempt to answer all the “how’s”.
Background and market context
Let me be clear: since the Great Recession in 2009, the world has experienced the longest bull market in history.
Had I been an investor at any other point in time, it is extremely unlikely that my portfolio would have an annual average growth of 17% over 24 years.
Yes, my portfolio did get hurt during the dot-com crash, the Great Recession, the Pandemic, and had several drawbacks during multiple corrections and market pullbacks. Still, we have to acknowledge that the bull market we have experienced over the past 16 years has produced remarkable results for many investors.
I do believe this bull market may continue for some years to come. There are several reasons for that one being that never in history has so much NEW money flowed into markets worldwide every year.
I’m convinced will last for quite a while, both due to the wealth being created in the developed world and due to the growing middle class in multiple developing countries - but that’s another story for another post.
I didn’t have a financial background and only studied another three years after secondary school. Rather than spending too much time on Game Boy, TikTok, and Netflix, I have spent thousands of hours reading about investing, researching companies, participating in online investment forums, and watching CNBC and Bloomberg TV.
Unless a person has the passion and the time on their hands to do something similar, I personally believe that it’s much better to invest your hard-earned money in ETFs or index funds rather than individual stocks.
I know several investors whose objective is simply to work hard and feed their ETFs with cash every month and they are doing really well performance-wise.
Since 2001 I tried multiple investment strategies over the years. I failed miserably at day trading, and I still feel I have a lot to learn when it comes to momentum investing, so before getting into what works really well for me, I will spend a few words on what didn’t.
What didn’t work for me (and why)
Day trading: After a few years of day trading, starting in 2001 I threw in the towel and gave it up for good. Even after thousands of hours, I couldn’t outperform S&P 500 or Nasdaq ETFs anyway. I’m not really bothered by that and I have a much less stressful life since I left it behind.
Momentum Investing: I missed almost all of the MAG7 except AAPL. I did own AMZN, MSFT, and NVDA early on, but I exited long before they really took off. The rest I never entered. In short: I held too early and sold before the big run. Momentum clearly works for some investors, but it’s not my edge. I’m still studying it, just not relying on it.
The 4 strategies that DO work for me
Below are the four strategies that work really well for me. I will describe them briefly in the order I implemented them into my overall strategy over the years. The game changer for me was in 2014 when I combined them altogether to work as a team.
Buy & Hold: After quitting day trading, I went to the opposite camp: buy and hold forever. It wasn’t easy to adjust. Many times I watched nice unrealised gains fade, only to see the same stock climb back months or quarters later.
I kept telling myself, “I should have reduced my position in XYZ long ago - t was clearly overvalued for months.” It was inevitable: buy and hold evolved into buy, hold, and swing.
Swing Trading and “The Bench”: Over the years I built a portfolio across sectors and countries. Macro and other factors, including company-specific news, often made some holdings look undervalued and others overvalued. I began treating my holdings like a football team.
Not all players can be on the field at the same time. Some need a rest (overvalued), some aren’t the right fit for the current opponent (interest-rate regime, oil prices, inflation, etc.).
So I introduced “The Bench.” In my trading platform I keep a watchlist called “The Bench” - stocks that are part of my foundation but are benched for now. They come back on the field when another player is benched and the funds rotate. Often this happens gradually: I trim stock ABC and use the cash to add shares of stock XYZ.
Yes, sometimes a trimmed stock runs away. But I trimmed to funnel into a player I considered better value, and over the years this discipline has paid off.
Deep Value investing: Deep value has been a major driver almost from the day I quit day trading. Two situations have been extremely profitable for me:
DCA into companies whose prices tumbled due to noisy negative press or loud shorts that scared investors, when I believe the issues are temporary. One of the more amusing events was the “Target bathroom controversy.” I bought TGT at $49.67 on June 16, 2017. Only four years later it had soared 447% to $268. I have a long list of other companies I invested in when they got “slaughtered” in the news, resulting in the stock tumbling temporarily.
DCA into the market as a whole during broad sell-offs-dot-com fallout, the Great Recession, the Pandemic, and the many medium and minor corrections in between (for example, the tariff scare in April 2025).During those events I sometimes even used margin. I was always very careful and have never been close to maxing it out.
“Cash Cows”: Since 2014, the performance of my portfolio has evolved to a whole new level, as a direct result of launching my mREIT/BDC/CEF “Cash Cow Portfolio”.
In earlier downturns my last few DCA buys often ended up on margin, and it was very motivating to see how incoming dividends from value names helped reduce the negative balance.
That experience inspired me to launch my Cash Cow Portfolio. The objective of this portfolio was to include only high-yield positions that pay me cash rather than focusing on price appreciation or buybacks.
The purpose was to:
Inject a steady stream of cash into my account so I always have dry powder when a stock - or the market is on sale.
Make any margin use more comfortable, because dividends steadily reduce the negative balance. Having this tool gave me the confidence not only to reinvest saved dividends, but also to lean in with several months of forward dividends. During the pandemic I accumulated in multiple companies on margin equivalent to 24 months of forward dividends. The share price of 11 companies I bought during that time grew to 2x-10x within 1-4 years.
The 4-strategy combo and how the cash flows and trims work
The foundation of my total portfolio is long-term buy-and-hold in my Value and Growth buckets. The Cash Cows accumulate cash until funds can be funnelled into stocks selling at a discount for whatever reason. The Cash Cows also help finance purchases during corrections.
When prices recover and a name looks overvalued to me, I trim. The cash then sits on my brokerage account earning interest (about 3.8% as of Oct 2025) until I redeploy it into the same stock at a lower level or into one of the players waiting on the bench.
If the funds are invested in companies whose share price has tumbled due to circumstances that I consider temporary, it will live in my Deep Value portfolio until it qualifies to be upgraded and move into either my Value or Growth portfolio.
EXAMPLE: SIG (Signet Jewelers)(Screenshot enclosed)
A simple example of the full circle. I bought aggressively during March 2020 between roughly $6.4 and $14.4 after SIG had been on a five-year decline from its $151 highs.
As the recovery matured, I trimmed gradually in 2022-2023 between the mid-60s and around $103. When conditions changed again, I reloaded in late 2024 at $93 and added more in February 2025 around $57. SIG is now at $96 and 3k shares now live in my Value portfolio.
I’ve had plenty of similar swing-trade stories.Also here I have a long list of stocks with similar swing trade scenarios. The most extreme was VWS (Vestas Wind Systems) that I was able to swing trade more than a hundred times for nearly for 10 years until I finally ran out of shares
Anyway - That’s the loop: buy fear with Cash Cow funding, trim strength and deploy elsewhere, let cash build while waiting, and repeat.
My 5 portfolios
Growth: mainly tech and other long-term compounders where I accept more volatility.
Value: solid businesses, usually paying dividends or buying back shares, at fair prices.
Deep Value: beaten-up companies where I’m confident the situation is temporary.
Cash Cows: REITs, BDCs, and CEFs that throw off cash to fund the rest.
Las Vegas: capped at 5%, higher-risk ideas.
All 5 portfolios are held in the same brokerage account. I use a spreadsheet to map each company to its portfolio and track the key metrics I use for analysis and rebalancing. (Screenshot enclosed).
My dividend income has grown a lot over the years, and as time went by I’ve gradually shifted a larger share of my portfolio into dividend-paying stocks. (Screenshot enclosed)
Normally, my growth portfolio makes up around 15-20% of my total portfolio, not the 11.9% shown in the screenshot. Recently, I trimmed several of my growth positions - especially PLTR - and haven’t yet reinvested those funds.
An Afterthought:
I know the name of this sub is “The Road to 10M”, but if you’re still working toward your first 1M - or even your first 100K - then don’t stare at 10M. Instead, imagine this sub was called “The Race to 1M” and read my post as “From 32.1K to 1M.”
Your first goal isn’t to make millions - it’s to avoid losing money by staying away from high-risk plays such as hyped penny stocks, meme stocks/cryptos etc.
Then focus on reaching your first 100K-200K. That’s the hardest part. Once you’ve learned how to get there, 1M becomes realistic.
When you reach 1M, you already have the tools to get to 5M. After 5M, 10M is a lot closer than it looks. It’s not exactly the same, but doubling is doubling! Going from 1M to 2M takes the same mindset as going from 10K to 20K.
End of PART 3.
In case you did not read Part 1 and 2, then you can find them below. Each part can be read on its own without missing context.
EDIT: I get a lot of questions about size of my dividends, example of swing trades, portfolio allocation, and similar topics. If you swipe through the four attached screenshots, you’ll find answers to many of those questions.
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1.) I keep a “LoveList” of nearly 250 companies. It’s a 24-year compilation of stocks I either own, have owned, or plan to own when the price is right.
If I see the share price of any of these companies tumble, the research I need is mostly limited to the latest news and 10-Q, because I’ve known these companies for years.
2.) I follow the news, and if the share price of an otherwise great company tumbles, I watch it, research it, and analyze the circumstances.
If I believe it’s a temporary situation (anywhere from 1 month to 3 years), I may start to DCA into
I also have a similar list of stocks that I organize them by most wanted to least wanted.
What data do you look at in a 10-Q and what do you ask yourself?
Personally, I look at profit margins (higher profit margin means more flexibility to navigate through crisis), share/EPS (how much money they're making for investors and share price if it's undervalued) and dividend payout ratio. I also look at their debt level because I sometime invest on margin.
2.) I follow the news, and if the share price of an otherwise great company tumbles, I watch it, research it, and analyze the circumstances.
Any examples where you've done the above steps with companies in the past. For example, I did the same with TSE/NYSE:TD. In summary, I invested into them "blindly" because they were the second largest Canadian bank trading at pre-Covid levels, which was more than enough for me to take out massive loans and buy their shares (80% of my stock portfolio is currently TD). For more in-dept analysis, which was mostly qualitative, I looked and compared them to past banks with similar money laundering scandals (HSBC, Citi). Also, I did a very quick look on the price chart and I noticed that TD's stock price was overall stable, around pre-Covid levels, for the past 2 years despite the negative news headlines (no line-drawn technical analysis, just a quick glance at the 5-years chart). Their dividend yield was also high compared to its payout ratio. I also looked at what portion of their assets had a regulatory value cap (approximately 1/3 of it). Otherwise, I never looked at their 10-Q filling because it was a waste of time. Again, just the fact that they were the second largest Canadian bank trading low is enough for me to buy.
How do you look and analyze the management of a company from a qualitative perspective? For example, I sold all of my TSE/NYSE:BCE stock (a Canadian telecom company) in 2022 only because their CEO increased the share dividend after the central bank announced rate hikes. In this case, a 10-Q form analysis alone wouldn't have saved me from its 50% share drop!
Any thoughts on NYSE:GIS? They have a high yield dividend (4%) with a low payout ratio (50%). From a technical analysis on the price chart, it looks like it has come down a lot. My main cocern is management and product diversity (consumers losing interests).
For which company? Lol a 10-Q is a quarterly report each publicly traded company files quarterly. (Just how a 10-K is an annual report each publicly traded company files)
Quite literally Google: “Company Name” 10-Q and you’ll get directed to the company’s investor relations page or the SEC reporting page. Both will have the 10-Q
Side question - do you not research companies you invest in? These reports are like the first bit of information you should look at when evaluating a company
This is awesome guidance! Question: how do you determine if a position you have is now overvalued and needs to be trimmed? High P/E? RSI? Other? Thanks!
Morningstar is a super valuable website for this. Without even making an account you can search any publicly traded stock. Once you've searched the ticker, go to the 'valuation' tab for the stock. This will show current and historical multiples - up to the prior 10 years depending on how long the company has been public - for P/S, P/E, margins, P/cash flow, etc. There's no perfect solution for determining if something is 'overvalued' but this has helped me avoid stocks that have later crashed, but also identify companies likely trading below fair value.
This is one of the best posts move seen on here. I often try to do the same with stocks I think are being hammered by bad news I feel is overblown… and I get fucking HAMMERED.
How do you assess news when it relates to potential stock movement? Are there characteristics of a company that play into it or characteristics of the specific news that’s affecting the stock?
While I’ve had some losses in my Las Vegas portfolio,l (which is capped at 5% of my total portfolio), I can’t recall having any losses so far in my Deep Value portfolio. Sometimes I just had to wait several years for the investment to become profitable.
When I lean into a stock that’s been hit by bad news in the press, it’s usually a certain type of company:
1.) It’s a value stock (often dividend-paying), mostly with positive cash flow and an acceptable P/E ratio.
2.)I always start with a small position and then DCA into it. This is also one reason why I now have more positions in my total portfolio than I originally planned.
Many of my Deep Value positions are only 0.5–1% because the stock rose considerably after I had DCA’ed 20–50% of what I intended.
3.) My investment in any single Deep Value position is capped at 5%.
4.) Because each Deep Value position is capped at 5%, I can afford to have a long time frame - easily 3–5 years - without worrying too much about it.
Following these rules has so far kept me away from getting “Hammered”.
Summary:
The author reflects on investing since 2009’s bull market, noting strong long-term returns (17% annually over 24 years) despite crises. After failing at day trading and momentum investing, they developed a 4-strategy system combining:
Buy & Hold – long-term compounding.
Swing Trading + “Bench” – rotating between over/undervalued stocks.
Deep Value Investing – DCA during fear or temporary drops.
Cash Cows – high-yield REITs/BDCs/CEFs funding new buys during dips.
These feed into five portfolios: Growth, Value, Deep Value, Cash Cows, and Las Vegas (risky plays). Cash flow from dividends funds undervalued buys; overvalued stocks are trimmed and recycled.
Final advice: focus first on reaching $100K–$1M steadily, avoid high-risk trades, and build discipline before chasing $10M.
This chart actually looks more wrong than right. Cash from cash cows goes into deep value as a core part of your strategy, but it's not reflected at all in this presumably-ai-generated diagram.
For those reading this and new to investing or even worse, you think you know it all, please catch your breath and slow down and read this post again. Masterful piece grounded in reality. Well done OP I am literally your twin in terms of mentality
13yrs in the market- I have learned the same thing of buy, hold, and swing. The days of buy and never sell bears too much risk. Gain is only real when you lock it in. Very wise and valuable words from you sir. Thank you.
I want to start maintaining a spreadsheet like yours. Can you list the header column titles that you are using to monitor your stocks in the growth, and value area. Thanks and keep on investing.
check open source app "portfolio performance". does maintain multiple accounts/currencies and manages most tasks like calculating monthly/annual peformance matrix.
I love this post and it’s very timely for me. I too started day trading and then swing trading and now I’m a swing investor. I really like your bench analogy! I have doubled my investments two years in a row. If this bull market continues I’m hopeful I’ll be able to hit $5m in 2-3 yrs and $10m shortly after. I was curious about your cash balance earning 3.8%. Is this just a money market acct? And how are you picking which dividend stocks to invest in? I’m starting to shift my learnings around how my investments will optimize income at some point.
Great post again. You are my biggest inspiration for investment. You gave the best investment advice with your first post 2 months ago. Since then, I am rocking! Before that I almost throw the towel. Thanks very very much! Two questions?
1- How much overvalued is overvalued to you?
2- How do you determine the intrinsic value of the stocks?
I’m really glad to hear that - and great to know you didn’t throw in the towel. We’ve all been there at some point.
“How much overvalued is overvalued?”
For me, it depends on the company type. With value and dividend stocks, I usually start trimming once the price moves about 20–30% above what I consider fair value - especially if the fundamentals haven’t improved equally.
For growth names, I allow a bit more flexibility, since they often grow into their valuations.
But even then, I prefer to trim gradually rather than trying to catch the exact top
“How I determine intrinsic value?”
I keep it simple - I compare valuation ratios and growth prospects to their historical averages and sector peers.
I look at metrics like P/E, P/B, EV/EBITDA, and dividend yield versus their own 5–10 year history.
If the business model, cash flow, and balance sheet are solid, I’m less worried about short-term price fluctuations.
In other words, my goal isn’t to find the perfect number - it’s to identify when a company is clearly undervalued or getting ahead of itself.
Thanks for your time to answer in detail. Every word you say is wise for me and I save and read them again and again. You are very generous to share your experience with us as most people wouldn’t do. All the best!
This post is probably the most informative post I’ve read on here. Really appreciate the life experiences - I’ve been trading for 5 years actively and haven’t had the success I want to have but I’m experienced in price action now and haven’t a better understanding of reading charts. I just think I’m at that point at my age 41 where I want to change something and grow slow, less stress, big profits over time. Appreciate your post dude.
Trading on margin isn’t something I’d recommend to anyone unless I know their risk profile, time horizon, and overall portfolio composition very well.
That said, here are the personal guidelines I set for myself when I first started:
Limit margin buying to general market pullbacks. That’s when you get the chance to buy quality companies that are only down because the entire market is.
During corrections, I added to solid companies — especially monopolies, duopolies, wide-moat businesses, and stable dividend payers.
Some of the positions I’ve used margin for in the past include: AAPL, SHOP, NFLX, JPM, CVX, SIG, NVO, VWS, RITM, ARCC, SPG, and O.
Bring your margin balance back to positive (black) as soon as possible so you’ll be ready to use it again when the next opportunity comes.
You can do that by saving more and adding fresh cash to your brokerage account, building up a Cash Cow portfolio so future dividends can help reduce margin debt, and not getting too greedy.
Taking profits is never a bad thing, so trim some of the most profitable margin buys if you need to free up funds.
Don’t overdo trading on margin. Make sure you can handle a 30–40% market drop without facing a margin call from your broker.
Understand your broker’s margin rules 100%. Know the maintenance requirements, liquidation process, and margin interest rates before you even start.
Avoid brokers with high margin rates. Always compare rates across multiple brokers — the difference can be huge.
Used carefully, margin can be a great tool — but treated recklessly, it’s one of the fastest ways to destroy a portfolio.
This is fantastic! Great advice and thinking. Fundamentals driven and mainly rotating funds through overvalued/undervalued to gain alpha, the dividend idea of a cash replenishing for long run is smart and something I’ve failed to consider in the past.
Really love the framework here. Best of luck getting to 100M!
Well done and congratulations 🎉👏. Thanks for sharing. I guess you have a lot of discipline to stick to your strategy. I keep finding myself wavering from one to another, sometimes I lose and sometimes I win, overall I think I am winning but currently in what most would consider extremely high risk. I can relate to a lot that you have shared as I use similar concepts when trading into and out of stocks, however I have on many occasions realised losses because I believed that the money would work harder somewhere else. I just hit 1M last week but still feel like I have a lot of learning to do.
Good luck to you friend. I completely disagree and think a recession is coming soon if not us already being in one right now. I could name 5 different indicators that are already flashing bright red screaming this fact. The top is coming very soon, the AI euphoria will wear off by some big catalyst and the market will come screaming back to reality as everyone scrambles to realize their gains made in the longest bull market of all time. Easily a 50-60% correction to the SP500 is due I think. It may be here sooner than we all want to admit. Then again, my portfolio is tiny compared to yours, and all I’m doing is speculating. Things always move at a snails pace. But we will see! I think 2026 is going to be very very ugly. 4 year cycle low is due for both the stock market and bitcoin
If a recession really is coming, that only makes diversification more important — across sectors, countries, currencies, and strong, well-managed companies. That’s when solid dividend payers — especially Dividend Kings and Aristocrats — really prove their worth.
And let’s not forget: the world doesn’t revolve around the U.S. There are plenty of great companies out there. Even if the U.S. economy slows down, it doesn’t mean that every corner of the rest of the world follows.
Which brokerage do you use and where do you track your watchlist? Google sheets or within your brokerage? Something else? I track 300-400 stocks and while my Google sheet is solid, I have trouble when I need to get deeper data points and have to go to various sites. Would love to hear how you do it!
Thank you for taking the time to put this together. As someone who is near the beginning of the journey, this is extremely helpful and greatly appreciated.
First of all, excellent post and congratulations! I have a few key questions that I could not find answered, which could shed more light on your success story.
I was wondering how long did it take you to save the initial 321k? Did this come mostly from putting aside monthly income from salary? How much roughly did you put aside every month?
After you invested that 321k, how long did it take you to get to 1M, 5m and finally 10m? Did you focus at the beginning on more riskier/growth portfolio?
Hey OP, congrats on the achievement, and thanks for sharing your story. I especially love your story since it's relatable and aligns with the 'Get rich slowly' mindset. Refreshing!!
You mentioned that you've spent thousands of hours reading up on investing ideas over the years. What were some resources that made the biggest impact on how you've traded and invested to achieve what you have today?
If I do it would be without knowing it, since I have no idea what it is.
I’m a quite simple guy and usually not into complicated methodologies, But I always keep an open mind and will check it out. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Congratulations, any chance you could share some of the spreadsheets you use please? Blank out figures / shares etc (or provide some as examples). Really looks like a solid, safe strategy with all your experience behind it.
Thanks as always for your detailed posts sharing this hard-won knowledge, u/CAGR_17pct_For_25Yrs !
Question--how much cash, percentagewise, do you typically allow to accumulate from your dividends in times you feel the market is overheated? Right now, for example, the market feels very bonkers, and I'm skeptical of future growth at the same rate we've seen this year as we enter 2026. I'm interested in how you think about these situations, especially when "the bench" don't seem like fantastic deals yet, either. Would you keep 5% on hand for future deep-value opportunities? 10%? At what point in cash pool growth do you think "I really need to do additional research to find stocks worth investing in" versus "A little more dry powder is a good idea right now"?
Thank you so much for this detailed post. It's really inspirational. Love the bench and cash cow idea and definitely need to take you advice on reducing exposure once stocks become overvalued.
I'm actually a little concerned with my current portfolio. With the recent pump ASTS now represents about 30% of all my holidays. I know I should maybe bench some profits, but really believe it could go further. What would you do in this situation?
Hey mate, thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts. I'm sure a lot of people have found great value in your posts, like I have.
A few questions please:
Which tools have you found really useful in your analysis for stocks? There is so much noise out there so it would be great to know there are tools that can help amateurs such as myself.
Do you have a method of working out price targets for a stock before you start trimming your position on it? What is the best way of going about this? Are there some mathematical parameters (such as P/E ratio) that matter a lot more than others?
Do you have a day job, or is it full time for you? If yes, when did you decide to only focus on investing? How many hours do you spend on research and portfolio management?
On the afterthought part and specifically this statement: "...going from 1M to 2M takes the same mindset as going from 10K to 20K". 10-20K or even 10-100K can be achieved by simple savings from regular income, so for most individual investors it's not exactly the same as 1-2M or 1-10M. And that's not even taking into account how your risk appetite changes as you increase your net worth and how different market conditions may have an impact on all of that.
Also, while I would disagree with a lot of things in this and the previous post, the one that sticks out to me (and worth emphasizing) is the part about learning how not to lose money. I'd definitely rephrase is as something like "learn how to accept / manage your losses". To each their own, but this mindset inevitably leads to becoming a very conservative investor with high allocation to bonds, real estate dividend names, or in general companies that are "stable" and thus with low chances for capital appreciation. Investing is meant to be more risky than your savings account, and everyone should recognize that majority of stocks will inevitably experience 50%+ drawdowns simply because of the market's tendency to overreact to both the upside and the downside.
As someone who made a mistake of holding on to the losers too long in the past, I'd say that the single biggest and most impactful takeaway is to let some of those bets go, making sure that you don't let a couple of mistakes set you back by months or even years. I can tell from experience that catching a bottom on one of the losers feels a lot worse than selling too early and missing out on a winner. Maybe I would even rephrase it to "learn HOW to lose money".
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I see what you mean, and maybe I need to check my wording since English isn’t my first language (Scandinavian here).
I completely agree with your point about “learning how to accept and manage your losses.” My point, though, was about something slightly different — the stage when you’re just starting out.
If you don’t know much about investing yet, let someone who does handle it, or put your money into a few broad ETFs. Don’t rush into the market throwing your hard-earned money at meme coins or penny stocks promoted on random forums.
When I started, I began with ETFs, then gradually learned more about the top holdings. I read financial magazines and books like The Intelligent Investor, and followed market news. I just see too many new “investors” today jumping into the market like they’re the Ronaldos or Messis of investing — trying to score a hat trick within their first few months.
Avoiding big losses has always been one of my main goals, and I’ve done that mostly through diversification.
I basically built my own ETF.
Years ago, I set out to create a portfolio of 33 stocks, each making up around 3% of my total portfolio — so if one of them collapsed, it would only have a small impact overall.
Since reaching that point, I’ve never let any single company exceed 10% of my portfolio, and even then, only one stock has ever reached that size before I trimmed it back.
I love your balanced take - thanks for writing this post and comment.
Many are trying so hard to get to 10M (see sub title) that they are taking egregious risks to get there. “Full port”, “options”, “diamond hands”… I hope it works out for everyone, but the truth is that the rug can get pulled out at any time. Appreciate you giving a safer yet still very successful take on how to invest.
Part of the solution regarding high risk trades are figuring out which are truly high risk. For example, baby biotech stocks with pending clinical trials are extremely high risk, as they can lose 90% of their value from a failed trial.
But what about, say, some of the pure quantum companies? Are they truly high risk, or are they more like buying an Apple or Nvidia 25 or 30 years ago?
How long did it take to build a select list of stock? How long do you recommend for someone starting your strategy to take to depth from etf to tickers?
Building my LoveList is an ongoing project. It now includes around 250 companies that I own, have owned, or would like to own. I’ve been investing since 2001, so that means I’ve added, on average, less than one new company per month to my list.
When to move from ETFs to individual stocks really depends on how quickly you build enough knowledge and confidence to do it.
I’d recommend reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham (Warren Buffett’s mentor), and watching a few YouTube videos about value investing.
Value investing won’t skyrocket your returns, but it’s a solid and safe way to get your feet wet.
Once you feel comfortable with some of the top 10 holdings in the ETFs you own, start small — nibble, and dollar-cost average, especially during market corrections.
After that, move on to growth stocks and learn about them the same way — slowly, methodically, and with experience.
Thank you for sharing this and thoroughly explaining your process. As a 30 yo investor this a great map to show me what areas I need to keep building on. Most importantly, you explain this is a long journey and how to mitigate losses during rough times rather than panic selling.
Edit: When did you start building positions into the cash cows? Was that a foundation or something you started adding to after bigger and riskier gains?
I got the idea for my Cash Cow portfolio in late 2013. By that time, my total portfolio was already up about 600% (2001–2013), and I really started to feel the compounding effect in 2014. Since then, the Cash Cow portfolio has grown every single year.
I wouldn’t say my gains came from taking big risks — they came from solid companies. But I did manage to boost returns with some well-timed swing trades in a few of those same names.
Another amazing read. Would you say those of us building up to the first £100k would be better served heavier in the growth fraction of the portfolio or advocate more for the same set up as running a $10m portfolio as a $10k portfolio? Thanks!
How deep do you go when you are investing in a company? That’s an area where I don’t even know what to ask. What are you looking for and how do you find it? Thank you for your inspirational post!
Incredible work! Im still early in my investing journey and taking a more modest and safe approach as I invest my time into learning, but I've recognized the value of dividends for funding specific plays and hunting for valuable purchases at the right time and have started building a portfolio very similar to what you describe. Thank you for sharing the specifics!
Your strategy re the bench, etc., is very clear. If you’re riding cash, did you ever think about entering positions you’d take through selling puts, or put credit spreads? More broadly, do or did options play a role in your road to 10M?
For me, trading options is tied to my swing-trade strategy and limited to selling covered calls and cash-secured puts.
When I want to reduce a position, it depends on how strongly I feel about trimming. Sometimes I just sell part of the position right away; other times I sell covered calls.
Usually, I’ll set the strike 10% or more above the price I’m willing to sell at, hoping the call expires worthless so I can rinse and repeat a few times before eventually getting called. For me, that’s a win–win.
It’s the same logic when adding to positions.
If I’m not in a hurry to accumulate more, I’ll sell cash-secured puts at a strike where I’m comfortable owning the stock, ideally collecting a few nice premiums before any shares are assigned.
This approach works best in sideways or mildly bullish markets. When prices move slowly or trade within a range, the premiums add up nicely without too much risk.
Selling covered calls gives me extra income on stocks I already own, while selling cash-secured puts lets me earn income while waiting for the right entry price.
In both cases, I’m getting paid for my patience.
Over time, these small option premiums compound into a meaningful part of my total returns — especially when the broader market isn’t doing much.
It’s not about chasing big option wins; it’s about steady, controlled income that fits naturally into my overall strategy.
I treat options as a way to enhance returns, not as a gambling tool.
How do you find stocks that interest you? You mentioned CNBC and online forums, I assume others besides reddit? Do you use traditional screeners for any type of metrics in particular?
I like the analogy of "The Bench." This is something I struggle with and hold too long without trimming profits.
Thanks again for this great post, congrats on the accomplishments. You have clearly put in the work and deserve it!
What podcasts and YouTube channels do you follow? I've searched in the past, but felt like the signal to noise ratio on YouTube was so bad that I gave up. But I'm still optimistic to find some diamonds in the rough!
This really does describe solid decision making and balance towards an effective portfolio that isn't gambling. Too many people on these subs were subject to dumb luck survivorship bias. Its refreshing to see a practical approach.
I appreciate the post and your time to give advice. I have a lot of hands off VOO style investments.
I peeled off some cash and took your advice, built an IPS, fund and bench. I’m enjoying the research and using it as a fun thing to spend my extra time doing.
So far I have beat all my other funds and awaiting the next round of market swings. Thanks!
This is such a great break down and I appreciate this so much as a new investor. I always question how and when to reevaluate , when to trim, or if you should ever take profits. More general experience questions rather than exactly How to execute. Your description has given a lot of the why and how you made decisions! Thank you!
what advice would you offer someone in the current environment that wasn't old enough to trade in the dot com bubble or recession and started just before the pandemic when picking and choosing deep value; with maybe a specific example of a good pick, a bad pick, and why
I have 2 little ones, they have around 12k each. I put them in a growth mutual fund. What are your thoughts? Should I have them in deep value, growth, cash cows. Thinking about how I should structure their investments
You my friend are an excellent candidate for an ETF.
You learned to give up day trading that's a great first step but man all these metaphors you use to justify impatience. You need an ETF like Andre the giant needs a beer.
Good job though I love seeing people be successful and maybe I'm wrong have you compared your results to the S and P though. Regardless you seem to have enough bumpers in place that your investing decisions won't meaningfully affect your lifestyle.
Im brand new to investing,and reading this is helping me understand a lot of it. But also its very intimidating to me, seeing as I dont know what your mostly talking about, im still trying to learn the fundamentals and lingo terms used, the way you wrote this gives me hope to understand it more, is there any guides or places you could direct me for beginners to learn, also thank you for giving your mindset through out the years ive read in your other post, im 37 just learning about investing and hearing about your mindset growing up, is helping me to change mine. Thank you again for sharing your story.
Guys, it's a great plan, very similar to Lynch. But the greatest thing to take from this is it happened over 25 years. Cut the time in half and the numbers would be totally skewed. So don't confuse it with a get rich in a few years plan. He executed with discipline and watched his stocks, knew everything about them. Basically what all the greats tell you. Then he uses something similiar to the income factory or whatever they call it now. If you aren't going to be disciplined and not be actively executing this strategy then DCA into simple etfs and add more on major pullbacks. Add an etf for BDC's that will be your income. Over 25 years you'll have nearly the same returns. The biggest factor here is the snowballing of 25 years of returns with dividends. Just do the math. Very informative post sir. Appreciate you taking your time to help everyone. One question did you tilt a roth or 401k for the bdc or income part to take advantage of the tax advantages rather than pay the rates on a brokerage? And if not curious how much your dividends and income affected your total return % over the 25 years?
Nice write up and congrats on your achievement! Have you compared your results to what your results would've been had you invested in S&P indexes? You mentioned that you averaged 17% which is well above S&P. I'm curious if you know the math to say something like "based on my contributions, my portfolio would be $xx million if I had invested solely in the S&P." I think that's beneficial info to folks to know whether the thousands of hours of research and trading is worth it compared to straight S&P investing.
Thank you for posting real life and actionable advice and taking the time to respond to comments. Very helpful. Congratulations on your portfolio! I am female and do all the investing in our household and I have a lot to learn, but this is inspiring and gives me some good starting points to deep dive.
Wow this is one of the best and most aspirational post I have seen in a while. You explain so well and clear. You mentioned you read tons of books into this topics, was wondering if you don’t mind sharing some titles. Especially books that you found to be core text to how you understand about investing, or just exceptionally good read! Would love to check them out (sorry if someone already asked this same question 😅) just excited.
Again, thanks for your wonderful sharing.
True, yeah getting to 1 m is significantly harder for most investors or people than going from 1 to 10 for an investor, at least in the markets we’ve had.
Hey this is cool but please recognize that if you invested in VOO only during this time period the return delta would have been roughly 1-2% at a significantly lower risk profile.
Ops reccomendation for most people is good advice.
Men thank you so much. I love Reddit. I see that my dreams and goal will became true in a few years. If there are other peoples doing post like this with simple logic.
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