Good morning!

UK Investor Show

What an enjoyable day Saturday was! I cycled from Islington down to Westminster for the show, on a Boris Bike, but unfortunately arrived late, and I missed the talks from Mark Slater & Nigel Wray.

However, the next session, from our own Ed, was just brilliant (and I'm not just saying that because he's my boss here!). Ed focused on investor psychology, and used some clever software to make it interactive. So he asked us a series of trick questions, we had a few seconds to respond on our smartphones, then he revealed how stupid we all were!! I got nearly every question wrong. Oh dear!

The key point was that Ed was highlighting how the quick, impulsive section of our brain (the old monkey brain which we share with animals) leads to us making terrible investing mistakes. Whereas the more we engage our higher level, slower, but more rational brain, then the better our performance should be.

Fascinating stuff. Also apparently it has been proven that women make better investors than men. I can quite believe that actually, as the female investors that I know seem much more level-headed than most male investors. We males are far too prone to make impulsive & reckless decisions - I could write a book about that for my own mistakes, and one day I will!

Isn't it strange therefore that it's nearly always the men who manage portfolios, despite being the wrong gender to do it well!? (Sweeping generalisation of the day no.1!)

I was delighted to meet literally dozens of my readers from here at the investor show. It was continuous all day actually, so in the end (well at lunchtime) I bowed to the inevitable and allowed my readers to start buying me pints of lager, and crisps at the Westminster Arms.

Peter quipped that he's going to wear safety goggles next time he buys me a pint & crisps, as I pebble-dashed him with small particles of salt & vinegar crisps, due to being unable to stop talking for long enough to swallow them!

I had to peel off back to the investor show at 2pm, in time to give a 20 minute talk to the audience in the Analyst Room. My stock picks from last year (WTM, something else, and AVS were up 17%, 17%, and 67%). So buoyed by this good luck, I decided to offer up some stock ideas for…

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