I already mentioned in my previous post that it was my intention to sell the remainder of my Allan International position soon, and that’s exactly what I did today. Including dividends the stock returned 17.5% in a bit more than one and a half years. Not bad, but not good either compared to the overall market or my own performance. But you can’t get it right every single time, and making mistakes is part of the learning process. But luckily making mistakes in investing doesn’t have to be costly. Not just because you can do something stupid and get lucky, but mainly because the market is often approximately right about the fair value of a company. Buying something that you think is undervalued but is actually reasonably priced isn’t going to cost you in the long run.
Disclosure
No position in Allan International anymore.
You say making mistakes is part of your learning process. But you don’t actually say which mistake you made at the time of investment and what you learned so that you won’t repeat that mistake. Can you share what you learned?
I already discussed this briefly in this post. Cliff notes: commodity business, so pay more attention to asset value than historical earnings and high returns on equity because it’s going to reverse to the mean.
This seems to be getting quite cheap. Now trading at 0.5 book and below cash. Business performance has not been stellar though – revenues are consistently declining. But it remains profitable. Trade war could inflict more damage…
Has been some time since I last looked at this stock. Perhaps time to revisit it 🙂