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... a guy posted on Saul's board:

https://discussion.fool.com/t/the-most-important-l...

What he found (long post, the interesting stuff are the tables at the end): IF his calculations are correct Saul himself(!) and the most respected posters with all their buying and selling did either not better or even worse than if they had left their portfolios from 1 year ago simply unchanged!

If correct this for me is a sensational finding as those guys are not just the average Joe who gets rather poorer as more transaction his portfolio has.

I think everybody who was/is a regular reader of that board respects them for their hard work to really analyze their companies in depth and for the concentrated knowledge on that board. Many are working in that field and REALLY know what they are talking about when it comes to the technology and the competitors. They are really doing what Warren preaches and stay in their area of competence. They are the experts. Not necessarily for valuation of that area, but definitely for picking in that specific area the best companies. And that 'picking the best, replacing by it the second or third best' led to no advantage over just staying with what they had 1 year ago?

If correct it leads to the question what chances any of us has to pick stocks in even different areas - without being an expert for this type of company, and that type of company and the next one might be interested in etc.

If correct it leads to the question what chances any of us has to pick stocks in even different areas - without being an expert for this type of company, and that type of company and the next one might be interested in etc.

Some industries and types of firms are more predictable than others, so it's reasonable to expect that some communities will be much more successful than others at making predictions.
The Saul folks have picked an exuberant, but hard to predict, end of the market.

By comparison it's not hard to predict a year ahead who the business leaders will be in, say, railroads or candy or even credit cards.
Even growth rates aren't that hard to predict.
Of course knowing that leadership may be of little use in predicting the stock prices, but at least business predictability makes one variable more constrained.

Jim

I think everybody who was/is a regular reader of that board respects them for their hard work to really analyze their companies in depth and for the concentrated knowledge on that board. Many are working in that field and REALLY know what they are talking about when it comes to the technology and the competitors.

This is only a guess, but I am not so sure they are experts in the fields and understand the technology that well. They do really study the companies, but they seem more concerned with sales growth, gross margin, and all the specific saas metrics, that I can't recall.

Saul regularly says he is not a techie. I don't think it is primarily sofware engineers on that board.

Saul regularly says he is not a techie. I don't think it is primarily sofware engineers on that board.

Not Saul, not Bear, not JohnWayne etc. You are absolutely right with respect to those main posters/leaders. The experts which on the old board published their expertise were others - - - but that came to an end. Apart from the voices of said leaders the board is very quiet.

Simply reason: Since the board change one has to APPLY to be allowed to post there (If you look at any post there you'll find for you there is no 'Reply' button: not unless you are registered for posting). Therefore the few posts are now nearly exclusively from said leaders => The quality has and will continue to go down as others like the real experts for SaaS companies can't easily post anymore.

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