In pursuit of happiness during dire straits

Rudyard Kipling’s poem http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm has the most inspiring message I’ve heard in the recent past. The last time I heard it being recited was when the great man himself (ROGER FEDERER was on the cosh during the greatest tennis match in history) To put it into perspective, the great man was losing 2 sets to love when the rains came.

The message is really to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs. After all, this aint the first time we are experiencing these surges. Bill Miller said it best in his letter to shareholders http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/31/news/companies/miller_letter.fortune/index.htm

From the east to the West, investors, bloggers, fund managers, journalists and even innocent bystanders all we hear are wails and cries about the substantial loss of value. Some have even taken it a step further to proclaim the demise of equities as a share class. I had hoped that I would not have to blog about this but unfortunately there’s too many naysayers out there that I ‘ve had to say a word or two.

My portfolio which is fully invested in Sub-Saharan markets has lost a whopping 15% since 1 January 2008. Now, make no mistake about the significance of this loss in value terms. It is huge. Naturally some would beg to differ depending on the size of their portfolio and also the principles of stock picking applied. As a result of this situation, I chided the value investor in me for putting me in this mess. I’ve therefore had to go back to the drawing board and revisit all the investment decisions I’ve made and guess what, I noted the following:

i) all the share prices are currently weak;
ii) I still like the businesses I’m invested in;
iii) The businesses are even more undervalued now than they have ever been;
iv) The share prices are still under-performing

At this point I concluded that the fundamentals are still true. My investment analysis thus has me doing only one thing; BUY MORE .