YouSaid · the spoken record

Ian Cassel

lines on the record: 75
first: 2017-02-14
most recent: 2017-02-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“They communicated all of those things. I did that for maybe 30 or 40 of those companies. And it was really interesting to go back to see how these CEOs talked about their business. Like William Thorndike says, they talked about kind of per share metrics when they talked about the business. And another little commonality in the companies I look into today, it's like oftentimes in their investor presentation, I'll have a slide showing the SG&A as a percentage of revenue, how it's declined over the last five years. They're proud of that. They show revenue per employee and profit per employee. They show to show how productive they are. It's like, and it's not something they've been taught to do. They do it.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To go down that rabbit trail already, but I can't think of a, I would say pick a company that you enjoy and then just go and learn about them. Another good book is a book called Hundred Baggers by Chris Mayer came out two years ago. And he talks about the different attributes of companies that have went up 100x. And it was kind of an offtake of Thomas Phelps' book, 10 to 1, the stock market, which was written in the 1970s that looked at the similar thing. Chris Mayer basically takes off where Tom Phelps left off in time and describes the next 365 companies that went up 100x. And what's interesting, not only is the book really good, it's a very easy read and it's very good. But in the back is an index of companies, of those companies that went up 100x. Actually going back and looking at those companies when they're very, very young and trying to pull up articles. And if they were public reading their filings and just seeing what those companies have”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say any company that maybe somebody just has is drawn to go back and just read their filings back before people know about them and see how the company, see how the business was explained, see how the CEO himself talked about the business. One of the formative books, not to get on this rabbit trail, but another formative book for me was William Thorndyke's, you know, the outsiders. And that's a lot of those principles I've applied to what I look for in the founders that I look for as well. There's just these really, these were kind of classic type folks that just didn't really necessarily care about Wall Street. That's why a lot of them just didn't like talking to analysts. The old Sam Walton of Walmart driving his pickup truck when he was worth $25 billion. He's like, he just didn't care what the world thought about him. It's like, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, I didn't.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stories of leaders and whatever they did in really short kind of 10 page nuggets that are easily digestible. And so those two books that I kind of powered through that kind of provide that inspiration to start each day. And on the business and investing side, I mentioned to you reading thousands of manual reports, and I know that's not a book, but I'll tell you what, when you read a company's annual reports, 10 of them or five of them in a row, it reads like a book. There's ups and downs and heroes and villains and good endings and bad endings. And I point to that as being very formative for my investing in my investment philosophy because it just focused me on developing a circle of competence early on and establishing what my two hard pile was very early on, being able to say no to things quicker.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then when the investing side, actually maybe I'll mention something else, one of the things if you were to ask me kind of what I do every morning that is kind of a ritual, I would say one of the things is I try to read or listen to something that will inspire me to get my day started out in the right track because I believe that you should be start each day like you're being fired out of a cannon. And so you got to find those things that will light your own fire so you can get the most out of each day. One of those books I'm reading now, which I think is a great book, is Tim Ferris' book, Tools of Titans. It's one of those things, especially for a person that might not have a lot of time given their season in life, which with a 16-month-old, I have less and less time to read. And it's a great book that's because it's three to four page chapters, and you can just read three or four or five of them every morning. And it's something that you'll learn a lot from and you can inspire you. Then there's another book called Getting There that is kind of set up a similar way where it just kind of tells”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would kind of categorize them in two categories personal development and kind of business and investor development. On the personal development side, and I think the first book that I remember reading over and over again, when I was a senior in high school, I could just tell that I wanted to brush up on my speaking skills. And so I took a Dale Carnegie course my senior year, and they make you read How to Win Friends and Influence People, which is kind of like the Bible of that class. And I remember reading that and then reading that three or four times. And soon after that, reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which is also a classic that kind of helped me kind of reaffirm how to set goals and how just reaffirm those goals in my mind. And that's what I did basically through my early 20s, just about full-time private investing or whatever your goal would be. And those are two books that kind of set me on the right path early.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I know it is, and he's just an amazing guy. You should definitely have him on to interview him. He's much more important than I am, and he's just a very knowledgeable, just kind-hearted guy. And just reaffirmed also kind of a concept in your life of trying to pour value into others every time you can.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“PDF and the PDF was 60 pages long. And in the PDF he listed, I don't know, about 18 different references of books, articles, case studies, research reports. And then below that, he took out the parts of those books, case studies that applied to intelligent fanatics, and he highlighted them. And below that, his commentary on each thing. And I was just blown away, you know, not by obviously the quality of what he just gave me, which is like the holy grail. I was like, oh, you know. But the fact that anybody would take the time and effort to do that for somebody that I never met him personally before or even talk to him on the phone. I maybe had five email correspondents with him. It hadn't taken him hours to put and assimilate that much information into one PDF for somebody he barely knew across the world. And that just, that was something that I've told him a few different times. I was like, that was pretty cool.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got to know Sanjay on Twitter of all places, which is interesting for a US microcap investor to find a Indian midcap investor is how he would probably qualify himself. And we just, he started following me, I started following him, and we just started an email exchange and things like that. And I think I mentioned before how he wrote an article covering the intelligent fanatics of India. And it's something that I was thinking about this book maybe for a year before that, but it was really after reading that that kind of gave me a push to kind of go after it. After I read his article, I emailed him and I just said, Sanjay, I mean, this is a great article. Is there any resources that you could point me to that would help me expand my mindset around this concept of intelligent fanatics? Is there anything? I thought he would just email me back right away and say, you know, yeah, here's the book, The Outsiders, or something like that. But he didn't respond right away. About two weeks later, I get an email back from him. And he said, here you go, Ian, I hope you enjoy. And in there was a piece of”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think something that sticks out in my mind is, I don't know if you know Sanjay Bakshi. He's a professor and fund manager.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. But yeah, but it was just mind drumming. I remember watching at $30 and they paid a dollar share dividend. And I was just like, really? It was like a kick in the teeth. But that was one of those that for whatever reason I remember that one more than a lot of things.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a company called Gold Resource Corporation, and it's since fallen down back to $5 or $6 or something like that. The round of trip.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It would have been, I lived on an island the rest of it. You said a day, this is more like of an experience. But you go through those things where it is just mind-blocking.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know. If it's the 50% drawdown, what's the second? I'll tell you that this is an interesting story. There was a company that, memorable, I don't know if it was good or bad, depends what side you're on, but there was a company I invested in in the mid-2000s. And at IPO'd at a dollar, and I was literally bought the first shares of this company when it went public. And I made a decent sized position. This would have been in 2006. And in 2000, so it ended up going to $8 or $9 and I ended up selling out of my position. It was a significant position. It was one of the main reasons why it was the ability to go full-time in 2009. So I sold it and I had a good relationship with management. Over the next two years, that stock would go to $30 a share And it would pay a dollar share dividend.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think with your story. I think probably the other thing I'd add to that too is in a way that I think I've been lucky and I put this in kind of air quotes is that I was basically as young enough I could be able to experience two bear markets. Of 2001, I was still 19 and I experienced it emotionally. Not as much as I would in 2008. But before I went full time, I needed to experience another bear market. And that was one of the things I worked down in my journal. Like I was not going to go full-time until I experienced another bear market to see if my strategy could be tested and I could prevail. And that's what 2008 kind of did for me is reasserting the fact, okay, I can do this. And so I needed to be tested again.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Give the information But it's great, but I also don't want to glorify it because it is really hard having to sell your positions. But it's also, I don't want to glorify the fact that it's stressful just because it's the same decision any small business owner makes or anybody that gets rid of their safety net in life to go after their dream do, whether it's to start a business or whatever. It's a similar type of decision process.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You'll like this story too, but I think it was the day before we got married, I told my wife, I said, you do realize that I would rather live on the street than have to work for anybody ever again. And she just looked at me and furrowed her brow. And I was like, that might not have been the right thing to say right before we got.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But hopefully all of your experience that you put in over the last 10 years, it forces you to make your best decisions when your back's against the wall. And I had occurrence of that two years after I went full time, I got married. And I had one of these black swan events occur in one of my positions in my portfolio. It was a 35% position of my portfolio, this one company. And it was one of those you wake up and it's 50% down. And two days later it's 70% down. And it was one of those real trying times for me just because you start questioning everything your strategy, your philosophy. The last eight years of me being able to do this was that just luck? You start questioning everything. But really, it was just kind of staying disciplined, you know, able to dig myself out of that hole and learn from it what I could. That was hard. But you also have the benefits once you figure it out that you can, I love what I do. I would never trade this for the world.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Advisor, it was just that tipping point of I want to do this and I went to bed dreaming about it and I woke up every day reaffirming it. I just wanted to be a private full-time investor but fully knowing that you can't spend too much you got to live a frugal life because you make hay while the sun's out as they say and you got to just keep your fixed costs low and your variable costs variable so you can turn on a dime if you have to and when I made the decision to go full time it was when I was single and so it's a much harder decision I think if you're married and have kids I oftentimes think about that too because I can afford to go broke myself if it was just me. But when you throw a wife and a kid into it, I can't take them down. And so that's the other mental kind of drain on you. Like you can't fail.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Company, you can do it. And so that's the pro of it. Especially if you are internally driven that you want to see what you can do and get the best out of life. You can't be the best at what you want to do doing a part-time. And that is really what drives you. And it can't be really about getting rich, it has to be about really just being really passionate about what your purpose is and that you want to be the best at what you can do. I mean, you know it too. It's like so many people they unfortunately work in eight to five job they hate and generally a lot of people like what they do but then they go home and they work for a couple hours on their hobby you know whether it's building model airplanes or whatever it is and then 10 years later they're wondering you know what if i would have spent time you know eight hours a day building model airplanes and maybe opening a storefront in my local shop what would happen you know and so it's it's really just and that's kind of what happened to me when i was a sophomore in college working for that financial”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I get asked by other people quite a bit about that decision to be a full time private investor. And I don't want to glorify it, you know, because everybody's like, oh, wow, that's great. It is very, very hard, especially with my investment strategy of concentrated long-term investing. I can't tell you how difficult it is to have to sell long-term investments to pay short-term bills. It doesn't matter if your monthly expenses are $2,000 or $30,000. It is just the anxiety and the stress level of it is 10 times more than the amount that you have to liquidate every month. It's just awful. And you don't think about it as much during the good times when things are working. It's when you're down 20 or 30 percent, which is bound to happen, and you still have to pay the bills. But it's also kind of the pros of it is the autonomy and the ability, you can do this wherever you are, whether you're in Tokyo, San Francisco, or here, as long as you have an internet connection and can buy a plane ticket to go visit a country.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's fair. Yeah. And it's interesting. You always verify that too. I mean, one company that I own, I went and talked to one of their customers, and this customer, the gentleman I talked to, controls about $2 billion in sales. And I had the ability to actually talk to him and say, the company I'm invested in, is their product as good as what they say? And he's like, yeah. He's like, it's great. He's like, because if it wasn't, I wouldn't buy it. I'd buy somebody else's. And so just constantly kind of verifying what you believe so you don't have that confirmation bias on what just because I own it, it's going to go up or whatever it is.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It could be IP related, but oftentimes it's just the amount of time and effort that the companies put into just building the brand and the customer service systems and everything. It's just very, very hard to disrupt. I mean, one of my investments in particular, you know, it would take, it wouldn't matter if a company had $500 million. It would take five years from a start to get to where they are today. And that time aspect is huge, because in five more years, there'll be five years ahead still, hopefully.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also, I always like to see the quality level of their product or service they're creating. The customers that they sell their product or service to, do they really need that product? If that product didn't exist in today's marketplace, would it cause that customer a lot of pain and aggravation? And so I like to invest in pain relievers, you know, call it like a pain relievers subset. And so there's a couple other kind of more general frameworks I try to apply to the companies on a qualitative level.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Believe it or not, you can find companies, even these small ones, because that's primarily a lot of the risk in these small companies is even if they have a good business, they're going up against competitors that have much more resources than they are. So that's almost the common framework I apply is, okay, here's a company with unlimited resources.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say that I try to apply a couple kind of frameworks around the businesses that I end up investing in. I really love kind of Warren Buffett's. I think I may even tweeted this out the other day. But he did a speech in 1987. He talked about if he was given a billion dollars, he couldn't hurt Wrigley's chewing gum company. If he was given $10 billion and he couldn't go out and hurt Coca-Cola, he couldn't make a dent in that company. And that's just a good way of assessing the quality level of those businesses and those brands. And I try to use that same framework on the companies when I find them.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I say this, and I kind of laugh because one of my investments is something that goes against completely against the grain of what I normally invest in. It just happens to be the biggest winner in my portfolio today. We can get it at it in particular later. But I would say I tried to steer clear of companies that are very capital intensive, companies where it takes $20 million, $50 million, $100 million to pump into it to get $1 out. So companies like oil and gas exploration, mining exploration, life sciences, biotechnology, things of that nature. Because my biggest, one of my biggest risks as an investor in microcaps is dilution and having a management team that doesn't know how to raise capital effectively, and many of them don't in these small microcap world. And so by taking rid of those companies, by only focusing on companies that don't need to raise money, you actually need to gate out a lot of the risk in microcap investing as a whole. So I primarily steer clear of those industries. And outside of that,”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Buy it in a store and talk to people that are selling it and things like that. But it's just all of that stuff kind of blended together.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I normally don't do too much modeling. Usually, what's attracted me to it has been some sort of inflection point in their business or their earnings report or something like that that showed that a tide has changed. And I have my own kind of take it back maybe a step further more than you want. But I kind of have my circle of competence of ideas that might be made up of 30 to 60 companies right now that I think qualifies really good businesses that I just watch and some of them just aren't good enough either valuation-wise for me to really make the effort to dig into them. And then there's a whole bunch of other companies that just kind of fall under the radar. But I think it's just the majority of just going through filings and just going through those things, just trying to kind of figure out what the story is as much as possible and even talking to some customers if you can. It's really easy with consumer products companies because you want.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say the main process when I find something I think is interesting, I really try to pull up all the public information that I can find. Just read all the annual reports that I can find. And some of these companies are young. Some of them have only been around for three or four years, and some of them have been around for 15 years. So just trying to get the full story of the company from their public financials first and foremost, because you can learn a lot just by reading those. And I try to do as much of that type of quantitative and qualitative legwork before I reach out to management and try to have a discussion on some, because a lot of times you don't know the right questions until you do all this work.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me even more time to kind of hone my craft. But it was more or less just through trial and error losing my own money over and over again, making some money, learning from my mistakes, and just kind of figuring it out that allowed me to then, after I graduated from graduate school, I worked for an advisement firm out of New Jersey and quit there three months later to start my own kind of advising kind of IR related firm. And my main goal when I started that was to get out of it as soon as I could. And so I did that for three years and had enough capital by the end of 2007 into 2008 and then just went full time. And that's what I've been doing ever since.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And drill it down to about 30 seconds, and he could sell that to anybody. And it was just an amazing thing to watch. And he just kind of like, so there's people like that, the people are like, well, why would you associate with him? But they all kind of provided these little things that I was able to capture the good of and leave out the bad. And then, you know, I learned from several people like that on how to apply these concepts. And even a simple concept like that, it's something I do with my own investments. It needs to be a simple story. If I can't tell the story in 45 seconds to you, and if you're not energized by it, there's something wrong with it. It's either too complicated or I just don't know it well enough. And so there's been a series of kind of mentors that I ran into over the next five or six years. And so I went from undergrad at Millersville University to going for my MBA at Villanova. And I got into an assistantship program at Villanova, which kind of paid for my tuition as I went. And so that kind of provided...”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of the information flow in collaboration at that time in the early 2000s dealing with microcaps was all in public message boards. So websites like investors hub, Silicon Investor, Raging Bull, that's just where people were that talked about these companies. And that's where you went to build your reputation. And so I was part of that group. And you're always there kind of typing about what you liked, why you liked it, defending it. And I met a bunch of great people, including a few gentlemen that ended up being mentors of mine during that period of time. And one of them, you know, you can get nuggets of wisdom from anybody. And one of them gentlemen in particular, I mean, to put it honestly, he's a stock promoter. And I ended up meeting with him. I took a trip out to where he lived, and we just met. And he just, the thing that he taught me was just his ability to just access management. And he was just a likable guy. And he could take a story.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I sold like 25 or $30. And this, by the way, this whole experience was 110% luck that I even made any money on it. And I realized that. But I point to that point in time with where kind of my love affair with a microcapp space started because it was the ability for even somebody, a knitwit like me, to be able to sit down with a management team and actually have a discussion with them. I wasn't going to sit down with Jack Welch at the time and talk to him or any of these large cap operators. It's the access to management that really drew me in to kind of the micro cap arena as a whole.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Capital on them. And I went to a conference here in New York City, and there was a company in particular that caught my attention that I just wanted to meet with. And so I got into this conference somehow, and I was able to get a one-on-one with the CEO, and the CEO was Hugh Panero of XM Satellite Radio. And so at the time, XM Satellite Radio, which now merged with Sirius, was this small, it was a microcap, I think it was 150 million marker cap, so it was a larger one. But there was a lot of risk involved with the business, and they launched these satellites up into space and had no subscribers and a pile of debt. But for some reason, I was interested in it. So I met with them and came out of that meeting just energized, and I plowed that $5,000 into XM satellite radio stock at $1.78 a share. I can remember it just like yesterday. And 14 months later, through a series of positive events, and the stock went to $34 from $1.78 in about 14 months.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fielded all those phone calls that came in from angry, upset, sad, you know, and I just got berated. I just got the shit beat out of me on the phone, quite honestly. And going into that experience, I thought that I was going to be a stockbroker and that I was going to manage other people's money. And coming out of that experience, it kind of turned me full tilt. You know, I did not want to deal with the emotions of others. Investing is hard enough dealing with your own emotions, let alone those of others. And so that was kind of the tipping point for me from that point forward, that I really just wanted to figure out how to do this and do this on my own. And I was just starting to get into the microcap arena too. But, you know, I quickly turned that $60,000 into about five. Around that same time. And I started looking at smaller companies, even smaller companies by that point in time. And when I was still in college, I took a bus trip up to New York City from Lancaster. I had fake business cards made.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I ended up, so I'll start back even further, but I started investing, I met my parents' financial advisor. This was during the internet bubble craze. My parents sat me down when I was a junior in high school and said, here's $20,000. This is all you're getting. You decide where you want to go to school, but this is all you're getting. So, you know, if you want to blow it all in one year, that F&M, which is right down the road, or go to Millersville, which is a community college. And I was getting more introduced to the markets, and I loved it, and specifically small technology companies, I decided to, okay, I'm going to go to the community college so I can invest this full amount into the marketplace. And so that's what I did, you know, and the 20,000 went to 40 or 50 or 60, whatever it was. And then at the same time, my sophomore year in college, I worked for a local stockbroker, and it was a pretty significant office. I think we had about 200 million under management, which is a decent amount, had about 1,200 clients. And I was more or less a glorified secretary there. So I was answering the phones and some other things. But when the internet bubble burst,”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think I maybe have to go back in time a little bit and describe why I'm a private full-time investor. That's okay. That's my”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think maybe an interesting, something interesting I picked up on is just through microcap clubs, the site with our membership. I would say some of the better investors in this space are entrepreneurs themselves, our small business owners themselves, because they know what it takes to grow a small business into a larger one. And oftentimes they have the right intellect and the ability to kind of understand what that entrepreneur, founder, or CEO is going through. So I found that a lot of the good investors in the MicroCrapp space do have that entrepreneurial or small business experience running a business. And that's kind of the unique thing about these small microcaps too. The investors that invest in these small ones is mostly kind of retail or very small institutions. But I think that's probably a common thread. I think a lot of entrepreneurs would tend to gravitate to these because they have a lot in common.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so it all pointed back to let's continue to just be the best investor you can be in this microcapp space because there's an opportunity here.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's really interesting. I mean, I've had a few conversations with Brent Bashore who interviewed here. He's a really interesting guy. We really connected. And I think the reason why I would stay away from that is to buy a private business. I don't want to operate a business. I kind of like being passive and evaluating the founders and invest in. The good ones that I find that can become great and let them manage the business, and obviously can still do that in private equity. You can just let them continue to run it. But I don't need to be that hands-on. And there's enough opportunity in these small microcaps I've found that I think there's still some really good opportunities out there. Every time I've stepped outside my area of expertise, which has been several times over the last 10 years, I've gotten my ass handed to me.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think that's a fair assessment, and it's only been through 15 years of doing this and really having close connections with probably 100 management teams that you get to kind of see what the qualities the winners had versus the losers.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the only way to develop the conviction to hold something that goes up 50%, 200%, 1,000%, and really just steer clear of the Peanut Gallery yelling at you every step of the way. And you'll run up against a bunch of articulate naysayers that are just throwing in bombs at you, saying you're an idiot for holding this thing. The only way to develop that conviction to hold is to know these positions better than the next person. And I don't mean that to sound egotistical. It's just the fact that these business, not many people know they exist, so you have the ability to know these businesses better than most others. And it also, when you know these companies really well, it allows you to see the cracks form in your investment thesis before others. So it gives you that time advantage to be able to hopefully get out of your position and minimize your losses. So that's why I say, you know, the most important thing is to know these businesses really, really well.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That just changes the investment thesis or management does something where it just cracks start forming. You see them. So that's another reason why you would just sell management incompetence. Sometimes you just see them do something so stupid you can't own it anymore. And then also when something gets overvalued, it doesn't happen enough, but when something goes from trading at a 10 PE to 100 PE, it might be smart to take at least a little bit off the table. And so that would be the fourth kind of main reason why I would sell position. But with my strategy and approach, which is fairly concentrated, I think, but I think this goes for everybody that has a semi-concentrated approach to microcaps. I think your most important thing, not to quote Howard Marks, but the most important thing is to know your positions better than most because everyone wants to achieve a multi-bagger in the portfolio, but the problem is to achieve a multi-bagger, you have had to hold a multi-bagger in the portfolio.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's probably four main reasons why I would sell. Number one is you find something better. And it does happen. That's probably the number one reason you just find something better that's better than your current lineup of companies. But when you find something, when I find something new, it can't just be 10 or 20% better than investment I'm in. It needs to be substantially better because I put the time and effort to know these positions so well and to trust management. And I oftentimes I do trust the execution of the companies to replace a company that I trust or a management team that I trust with something that is new that I haven't built up that trust level in. I'm not going to replace that just to make what I believe is another 10% needs to be significantly better than what I currently own. So you're constantly looking at your current five or six companies and trying to always be in the best companies you can find, but a new investment needs to be a lot better, not just a little better. And so the second reason would be if the story changes often, which happens quite often, something might come out of left field.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have no idea. I couldn't even tell you what my performance was last year. I don't keep track of those things because I don't manage other people's money. It's not important that important to me to keep track of what my performance is.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Usually I try to form not a model, but really kind of a framework for what I think that company can produce in cash flow and earnings moving forward two or three years and usually looking forward about 12 months and then back into a multiple that I feel comfortable paying up to. And normally I pay up to an amount with my initial investment when I initially start buying something. I try to leave myself where I think I can at least make 50% just on the arbitrage of just not people knowing this company exists yet. And there's a company that's growing 30% and trading at 10 PE that I'm willing to pay up to 10 for that because I think once they continue to grow and it gets discovered, it can trade at 15, 20, 25 PET's kind of simply sort of how I look at the fundamental framework.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Row quality data on it as well. But I would rather focus on trying to find those best half a dozen companies that are really run by exceptional owner operators that can make a thousand percent return, 2,000%.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think the answer is there's just so much more that it's just through kind of experience of investing in these things for so long that you pick up on these little qualitative and quantitative nuggets that only through time you realize that those little qualitative nuggets you didn't put that much emphasis on before were really significant when you look back and so just even looking at obviously you could screen for it, but looking at management salaries and how they're incentivized, things of that nature. I think these small microcaps are the ultimate stock pickers market. It's hard to create a quant strategy around them based off financials. I mean, I'm a, you know, this is not endorsement. I'm a cap IQ subscriber. So, I mean, they're a decent firm, you know, but even they get a lot of the screens wrong when you do, you know, once these little small companies. And so it's really hard to get very accurate information even on these very small ones because they're so small and unknown and there's always companies entering the space and some exiting. And, you know, it's just hard to get.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I'm primarily looking to buy the companies when they're fundamentally undervalued. I'm looking for situations that are undervalued that can get overvalued. And what I mean by that is I want to initially take a position in something that is fundamentally undervalued today, but I really want to invest in companies that are starting to show the signs that they could perhaps be a great company. And that's what I mean by something that can get over.”
2017-02-14 · Invest Like the Best · Ian Cassel – Investing In Tiny Stocks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.24] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source