15 Comments
User's avatar
Neural Foundry's avatar

Thoughtful examination of how margin-of-safety thinking can become a trap. The shift from defensive value investing to hunting asymmetric upside makes sense when operating in microcaps where the real edge comes from spotting catalysts before consensus. I've watched portfolios get stuck in perpetual 'safety' mode,holding undervalued mediocrity while missing moonsots. The observation that MOS often masks underlying business problems rather than protecting against them is spot on.

Premski's avatar

What a journey in 2025. And we need to repeat all over again in 2026!

AlmostMongolian's avatar

Definitely! The picks I got from you (Liberty and Hydreight) were amazing

Guido's avatar

Thank you for this great update. It was the reason I decided to take out an annual subscription. What do you think is possible for Hydreight in 2026? Do you think it's possible for them to reach a market capitalisation of 1 billion? I'm hoping for £400 million in revenue, then it might be possible. I would really appreciate your opinion.

I'm glad to have found you and an account.

Greetings from Germany

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

AlmostMongolian's avatar

Thanks for the annual sub!

One billion is certainly possible. Even at a lower revenue number than 400m if they uplist to nasdaq and the growth story gets more traction as multiples can get out of control when a growth stock gets hyped up.

James | Slack Capital's avatar

Thanks for the shout-out with eXoZymes! Very exciting stock for the years ahead and I do agree with your harsh comments regarding their Website and Marketing. Hopefully it will change soon

Matt S's avatar

Great introspection. Well done

Pitching Value's avatar

I don't understand how your return was only 40% with all these high return picks?

I like your confidence but I will guarantee you will keep making mistakes. It's part of the game and you will keep learning every year.

Margin of safety is not necessarily about downside risk. If you think there's 10% chance a stock is a zero but a 90% chance the stock is a 10 bagger the probability weighted return gives you a huge margin of safety. But there is a big downside risk (left-tail risk).

On the other hand a very safe stock (max 20% downside) with only a 20% upside gives you way less margin of safety.

AlmostMongolian's avatar

On the return question. It's a rough estimate. The reason I don't even know the return accuratelly because I have many accounts and some of the brokers I use like Degiro do not offer a way to track annual returns. So I just kind of eyeballed the return, and maybe it's a bit lowballed, but I think it's in the ballpark. Voxtur was a big position, and it went to 0. Sintana was a big position that I kept adding to, and it kept going down. And some of my best performers, like Libertystream, the initial position was not big. So that's why the return is not as high as it would seem from looking at the individual stock returns.

The no mistakes bit was tongue-in-cheek. I will keep making mistakes and learning every year.

Pitching Value's avatar

Ah my bad lol, my joke detector did not go off!

40% is still very good. Ah right, a big zero does hurt the overall performance hard. I'm happy I've managed to cut most of my losers early so far.

Why not use IBKR?

AlmostMongolian's avatar

I use it but only when I have to. When the stock I want is only available there. I've grown to hate their platform, so much hassle compared to Degiro for example

Pitching Value's avatar

I haven't used any other platform but imo the web interface and mobile app are really easy to use. Their reporting does take some time to figure out though.

Also cheap margin is always nice to have! :)

GL this year!

Miguel's avatar

I’ve trimmed some of my profits from $WGR and $LIB and put them into $MLM.ax. Maiden JORC resource due soon, have sufficient cash, huge management buy-in. MC is 8M AUD right now… and you can buy it at nearly the same price as management just bought in for.

Miguel's avatar

Sorry $M2M.ax

AlmostMongolian's avatar

I'll check it out