Back in December 23, 2015 I wrote about a stock in our All Investable Screener, which you can register for here, called Moneygram International Inc (NASDAQ:MGI). You can read the article here.
MoneyGram International, Inc. (MoneyGram) is of course the money transfer and payment services company.
As you can see (below), at the time I wrote the article, MoneyGram’s share price had dropped over 23% in the preceeding 12 months, and was trading at around $6.80.
(Source: Google Finance)
There was much speculation around Moneygram including the impact that Walmart would have on their money transfer business.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. had unveiled their new service, Walmart-2-Walmart, which allowed customers to send and receive up to $900 at a time at more than 4,000 stores. Their aim was to take a bite out of the roughly $900 billion in so-called person-to-person payments made each year in the U.S., often in the form of cash or checks.
Shares in MoneyGram had been crushed on the news as the company had been providing money-transfer services in Wal-Mart stores.
I bought the stock when it was $7.08 and watched it fall a further 33% to $4.75 on February 11 this year.
(Source: Google Finance)
The stock fell out of the screen completely and I received a number of emails asking what to do. My advice was to hold the stock for one year and one day, as we do here at the Acquirer’s Multiple, and then re-balance. But, a number of investors had become impatient about the prospects of the stock and sold their positions.
The problem for these investors was their inclination to sell a stock when the share price continues to fall after purchase. Thinking that they’ve made the wrong decision and selling out of their positions to mitigate any further ‘loss’.
Now I want you to see what happens with a little patience and a sound ‘process’.
Following is Moneygram’s share price history over the past twelve months, including the time at which I bought it on December 22, 2015.
As you can see, Moneygram’s share price fell 33% after I bought it and has subsequently climbed 103% to $9.66 i.e. The stock price is up 37% from the time that I purchased it.
The point of this article is not to show you what a great stock picker I am. It’s to demonstrate that all I did was hold my nerve when the stock fell 33% by following a evidence based process that has been proven to work.
In the world of value investing you need to be able to live through drawdowns in order to achieve maximum performance. As Buffet and Munger have always said, investing is not about having a high degree of intelligence, its about having the right mental aptitude.
If you can’t live through these drawdowns you’re unlikely to succeed in the world of value investing.
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