Why I Don't Pick Stocks...

Hey, welcome back to the show. So today I want to share about this past weekend, the first time I've ever gone out and speculated and picked a stock. There was this one stock. I don't even know if I should say the name. I'm so embarrassed by it, but just one stock I thought was, it was going to be hot, right? This is a stock I've heard about for a long time. It's called Nikola, Nikola Motors. And if you know where this story is going, but I've heard about them for years. I'm in Utah and they have a lot of investors from Utah. He's from Arizona, kind of this area. A lot of people invest. My father, family, friends, a lot of people have invested. And so I said, you know what, they IPO'd earlier this summer, and I said, I'm getting in. I typically buy very safe, long-term, when I'm doing stocks. I have some money in my brokerage account, and it's long-term play, 'cause I am a big believer in alternative investments. I have a lot of money in my own fund, a lot of money in actually other funds that I've invested into, and I love that model. And I really don't love the stock picking model, but I said, you know what, I'm gonna throw $20 grand down on Nikola. Let's just see what happens. And I bought Nikola at about, I think, $35 a share is where I bought it at. The first day I bought it, It went up 21%. And I was like, boom, like this is the best. Like I felt like, you know, when you walk into Vegas and you're gambling, you get that first win, bam, I was in. I was like, okay, I'm hooked. This is the easiest thing I've ever done. I just made 21% in a day. And my strategy though was long-term. This is going to be a long-term hold. I'm going to have this forever. Turns out Nikola has had a lot of allegations against them. I'm not going to say what's right or wrong in this podcast, but a lot of allegations that they don't have proprietary technology. Their technology is actually Not real. They don't actually own. They don't have any cars that are functioning and running. There's a lot of allegations against them. Trevor Milton stepped down as chairman today as the filming. I think this will come out in maybe a week or two whenever, but today he stepped out of the his seat. And this morning my wife was making fun of me. I was up at. So I live in Utah, and at 7 a.m. our time is when the the market opens. I was up at 6:45 deciding like I had my brokerage account open. Was I gonna sell my shares? And my wife was sitting there. She she was making fun of me this morning. Bridger, what are you doing? What's going on? Like I don't know what to do. Should we sell? And this is my first time ever speculating on a stock. Anyways, learned a lot through this experience. Now, oh, by the way, market opened, it dropped I think 32%, like instantly, somewhere around that. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, sorry. But it made me really think today, I want to make an episode about this, about how much I hate speculating and picking stocks. Now, there's other people that run funds that crush it and they can pick stocks, but over time, typically stock pickers, they don't last. Yes, they last for a year, 2 years, or 3 years, but over a 10-year run, 99% of all stock pickers end up blowing up their account. This is what I, I don't like about public markets is there's so many things out of your control. There are so many factors that you can't control as an investor sitting in Salt Lake City, Utah, buying Nikola stock. I have nothing. I can't control really anything that's going on there. I don't see— I can read stuff online. I mean, there's no control factor. And the biggest piece for funds, especially alternative funds, is that alpha, that aspect of control. In my funds, I do a lot of short-term loans and lending. So, when we do a loan, I can step into that one deal and control a lot of pieces of that deal and make it a very— find asymmetrical risk where I have relatively high return for low risk. On the stock market, I just don't feel that way. Maybe I'm not smart enough. I obviously have not spent a lot of time trading on the stock market as you can tell. It's an incredible book I've read and I've actually read a lot of books about trading and working on anyways all these things but one of them I love is called Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. If you haven't read this book, it's incredible. Written I believe back in the 1930s. It's written about the 1920s. And about this one kid who goes and becomes a stock trader and how things work. And you're reading the book and it's like, wow. This is before, by the way, this is before the SEC. This is pre-SEC. You're looking at stuff and you're like, that's happening today. Like all the stuff in that book, you're hearing about people shorting stocks and putting out bad articles about them and then big players in the market moving and shifting markets for their agenda and big players coming together and making conglomerates that they're going to all short this one stock, one person's going to buy it and they're going to have this whole plan. And they all screw each other. I mean, it is like you're reading it back then, you think, wow, this is crazy. But then you look at today and the same things are happening. For me, at least, I really don't like speculating. I don't have— I have a small portion of my personal wealth in the stock market. I heavily tend towards alternative investments, especially alternatives that I manage, that I can oversee, and that I can find. It's not just ones and zeros. I actually can come in and have a control aspect of the assets I purchase. Or invest in. And I absolutely love that. And that's a big play for me personally. And this alternative game is, yes, there's some people out there that run funds. And I know people listen to this, maybe you want to be, you know, trade forex or trade commodities, trade on the public markets. But it's a zero-sum game, as you know. And if you've been in it long enough, you know better than me that there are winners and losers all the time. In the alternative space, I don't see that as often unless there's blatant fraud or unless there's someone's clearly lying. There's a lot of things in, especially in lending, that you can control a lot of pieces. When buying privately owned businesses, you can find undervalued businesses that have huge multiples, huge returns. And that's why I personally am— I'm a private guy. I like playing in the private and debt spaces. And as you can tell, I had a quite, you know, decent loss this weekend on Nikola stock, my one speculative stock I've ever bought in my life. I probably won't do that again. I'm gonna let it grow in ETFs personally and just do that. By the way, not financial legal advice here, disclaimer. But lessons learned, that— and that's why I love Investing in private investments. Even if you're not running a fund listening to the show, investing in real estate that you hold. You've heard this 1,000 times but buying duplexes, fourplexes, eightplex, 16-plex, right? Putting your money there, putting your money with an alternative fund manager, putting your money in your own funds, right, in your own assets, doing a hard money loan to a friend. A lot of times I see those being a lot easier and safer than it looks on paper if you know what you're doing and that's kind of what we talk about on the show is to teach you what What to do. Again, not financial legal advice, but that's what I've seen work for me and where I like to play. Yes, I have money in a brokerage account that grows in a really long-term, slow-growth ETF-style model as almost a nest egg. That's for me is like, I treat that as a cash account almost. It's almost like this is cash just in case crap hits the fan over on my fun side of things, I'll transfer money back. That's how I treat it. Besides the $20 grand I put on Nikola, the rest, a couple hundred thousand dollars in other places, is put there. So anyways, that's my lessons sharing with you today. I, uh, I'm not a stock picker. If you are, message me, let me know how to pick stocks better, how to find it. But I— it's just not for me. And that's why I love this space. We started this show primarily focusing on alternative investments because you can find alpha, I think, I think a lot easier on those pieces rather than playing against people on Wall Street doing this 24/7. They have high-frequency traders. They're putting, you know, fiber lines from Chicago to New York so they can trade a half second faster than you can. I mean, you're playing against those people. And, uh, for me, I want to play with myself and set my own rules. So anyways, hope you guys enjoy. If you like what we're doing, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to this channel. Also, we have a private Facebook group. I go live in there once a week. We talk about finding deals, finding investors. We go very in-depth. We do live Q&A. If you want to join, it's called Investment Fund Secrets. Online on Facebook, you can go in there. It's a free group. You just put in— you have to put in your email and stuff and join that group. But we go live in there and I can answer your questions directly. So pretty cool. You can meet other people that are starting funds, and we have this whole online community that we're growing on Facebook as a Facebook group. So if you want to reach out, if you want to learn more, hop in that group. I think it's one of the best places to connect with me and our team and our kind of ecosystem of what we're doing. So all right guys, see you later on the next episode. Bye!