Marty's Story

After my wife and I retired and relocated out of Brisbane we had about A$600,000 in investable funds.

I started by putting some money into managed funds. After a poor experience with a large fund that left me 5% down on day one, I decided that there had to be a better way. I have never used a fund manager or investment adviser since.

About this time Amazon started selling books and I purchased a selection of investment books, including "The Zulu Principle". It is fair to say the Zulu Principle had the largest effect on my investing. I started subscribing to a firm in Australia that was similar to Stockopedia but in a much smaller way. This worked great and I beat the market in a modest way. They were then taken over and promptly closed down - for the next few years I flew blind.

I use Stockopedia to screen stocks with a combination of criteria. I start with the StockRank and each of the Value, Quality, and Momentum Ranks. I look at the Piotroski F-score, Altman Z2-Score, ROE, P/E, Market Cap, and Dividend. I adjust values to get about 20 to 30 candidates and then look at the result, selecting shares that give a fair spread of industries and don't duplicate shares already held.

This is mostly a mechanical process and I trust Stockopedia.

About two and a half years ago I started with Stockopedia and rearranged my portfolio - and things improved greatly. I measure my performance against the Australian All Ordinaries Accumulation Index and currently sit about 6% above over the last year and a half.

I've improved my results significantly and reduced the time required to select shares to buy and sell.

Keep learning!