Hall of Fame investor Ralph Wanger once remarked that baseball fans remember how many home runs Babe Ruth hit in his best year, but they usually can't recall how many strikeouts he had. That keen insight will be central to our new real-money "10-Bagger Portfolio."
Great investors like Peter Lynch and Fool co-founder David Gardner have understood this principle intuitively. Indeed, Lynch is responsible for coining the term "10-bagger," and he once remarked, "all you need for a lifetime of successful investing is a few big winners, and the pluses from those will overwhelm the minuses from the stocks that don't work out." We completely agree. That's why our 10-Bagger Portfolio will make prudent bets on the greatest investing opportunities of our generation. We're confident that a few big winners will reward all of the stakeholders in our portfolio tremendously.
Our goals
Building on the foundations of an earlier real-money portfolio, we (John Reeves and David Meier) will look for outstanding businesses that will deliver solid returns for investors over the long term. Some selections will be smaller companies that have the potential to become 10-baggers over time. Others will be larger, more-established companies that can go up two or three times in value over a five-year period. In each case, we prefer to take a patient, methodical approach toward meeting our goals.
And we'll only sell if there is a significant change in our investment thesis. It's not our intention to create value by trading in and out of stocks. We'll leave that to the smart guys on Wall Street.
How we'll achieve our goals
We won't be strictly limiting ourselves to any particular style or approach. We're unapologetically looking for the next Chipotle or Apple. These companies were right before all of our eyes in broad daylight, but some folks avoided them or sold them too early because they were "overvalued." Other folks continued to hold these fantastic businesses, and were rewarded with multibaggers.
Here are some tactics that we will deploy in finding outperforming investments:
- Find young companies with exciting business models that can change the world. We feel Infinera (Nasdaq: INFN) is one such company. It developed a transformational technology, the photonic integrated circuit, and set itself apart from the crowd.
- Scoop up companies that benefit from technological or economic trends. MAKO Surgical (Nasdaq: MAKO) is a great example of this type of company. It has been called the "next Intuitive Surgical (Nasdaq: ISRG)" -- and that's a compliment. Both companies developed robotic surgery systems that focus on minimally invasive cuts and promote shorter recovery times.
- Prudently invest in outstanding businesses that know how to create value over time like Denbury Resources (NYSE: DNR). This unique oil company injects CO2 into old wells in order to extract leftover oil. We're pretty excited about the company's prospects.
- Finally, on occasion, we may consider investing in a proven business that appears to have stumbled temporarily. Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX), with its dramatic implosion last fall, is an example of this type of company.
Let's learn together
We'll be maintaining a large database of investing ideas from our reading. We intend to share these ideas on Fool.com and @10-Bagger Stocks on Twitter. Our ultimate aim is to learn and invest alongside our readers and followers. If we can identify a 10-Bagger or two along the way, that will make the experience even sweeter.
For now, you may want to add each of the companies mentioned above to your very own My Watchlist, so you can track and monitor their progress.
