Welcome to Investing for Beginners podcast, Andrew and I are going to do a little blast from the past today. We’re going to talk to our second guest actually when we started the podcast. We’re going to have Braden from Stratosphere Investing talk to us tonight, this is going to be a lot of fun Braden is going to catch us upon what he’s been up to and see all the crazy things that he’s doing so without any further ado. Andrew and Braden why don’t you guys started us off.
Andrew: yeah Braden welcome to the show I think it’ll be very interesting for everybody because last time we talked to you were still beginner kind of. With a lot of different questions and seem like you’re forming an approach and a lot of intelligent questions.
You could tell that a lot of the basics were digested and it was just about finding exactly where you were comfortable and then actually getting that experience in the market.
Take us through how you got started and how you’re able to evolve your approach to now. We talked before the show about how you’ve had some fantastic returns with your stocks lately so kind of walk us through that.
Braden: yeah that’s right well thanks for having me on guys. I’m Braden Dennis and wow what a journey it’s been I guess since even before even before this show to now and kind of I guess midpoint where I came on the show for the second episode I had already kind of digested like you said that we get the basics my questions won’t come and just you know where do I start?
It’s I have this now formed a strategy and how do I how do I continue to grow it and some other questions that maybe others had as well and then fast forward to now I’ve started my blog and podcast. Shameless plug here at Stratosphereinvesting.com and now it’s you know I guess brings me back two years ago, and I had you know the foundations of investing.
I’ve always thought what makes me a good investor is I have the very good temperament. I’m able to block out some of the noise and kind of the other manias that tend to happen in financial markets and really to gain that temperament and have that outlook when I started investing. I mean we started in the middle of a bull market, and now it’s continuing to roar on if you don’t learn from history and you don’t study the Great’s and see the kind of changes that happen in the markets over a long period.
If you don’t study that how are you supposed to know how to protect you know minimize downside risk protect from vicious drawdowns if you don’t understand what’s happening in the past. So I’ve operated with a margin emerging of safety, picked fantastic businesses known my businesses incredibly well.
I’m a Canadian, so you know where I got a look at a little differently my benchmark is the TSX, and it’s not the S&P; 500 I mean some could argue that the S&P; could be my benchmark is now I could just pick up an index fund but not only is that incredibly boring is you know at the end of the day though ETFs are actually carrying an extreme amount of risk in my eyes. their market capitalizing market capitalization weighted and what that really have what that really does is a large portion of that fund is now dumped in what we’ll call the FANG stocks and if you don’t know what the FANG stocks are it’s Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google and depending on who you talk you might throw some other A’s and ends in that mix.
But really at the end of the day, they’ve gone to irrational highs, and you’re carrying that way that that risk of potential massive drawdowns if you own that fund.