2023 Recap and Looking Ahead to 2024

I hope everyone is having a joyous and wonderful holiday season. I have accomplished my goal of eating my own body weight in candy canes and those chocolate oranges. Before we officially hit 2024 I though I would provide a quick update on Petty Cash for 2023 and what I am planning for 2024. This is not an investing recap. I will do one with more detail on performance and what I’m thinking in a different post.

2023 Recap

Posts

I posted on here 50 times in 2023. Not too bad. Blogging has always been something I am very inconsistent with. I will get a spurt of inspiration and post regularly, only to have entropy take over and revert back to posting randomly. I have other parts of my life where I am a drill sergeant, but writing is not one of them. The main reasons are 1) that I don’t always have something to say. Well, I mean I always have something to say. I just don’t think it’s that valuable, so I keep it to myself. 2) I get my ideas and information from a variety of sources and sometimes I feel like a thief when I share them. I mean some of the companies I own I could really just create a post with a link to someone else’s work and write “Yeah, what (insert person) said.” And 3) Sometimes I start a write-up as I am building a position and the stock rips. I feel like it’s promotional to say “here is the company I purchased and it’s already up 20-50%”. Such a thing happened to NEPH as I was finishing my post. I managed to get two slugs of capital deployed below $1.50. Then it shot up to $2 and I though I would wait until it came back down closer to when I purchased, and now it’s over $3.50.

Another struggle is that I have not found a balance in the form of the posts. I have tried putting in interesting podcasts (I hate being a podcast guy sometimes), individual company updates, batching company updates, book reviews, thoughts on the markets, etc. None have really felt natural to me yet.

Subscribers

I added about 160 subscribers this year. That is about 159 more than I thought because I knew my mom would subscribe once she figured out how (Hi Mom). In case you are new here, I am quite self deprecating and not promotional in the slightest. I really try not to take myself too seriously. As such, there is essentially no push from me to grow subscribers. That will not change in 2024.

Topics

As I mentioned, I have meandered a few times on what to post and how frequently. I’m already pretty niche focusing on Canadian microcaps. I have tried including some other things like book reviews, lifting, and even when I got my then 12 year old involved in his first proxy vote. I plan on posting about non-investing things here and there, so expect a stumble or two as I navigate this. Of course, your feedback is appreciated.

Looking Ahead

When I look to the areas of my life that I am the most proud of I can see a common pattern. Things are prioritized and scheduled into my day consistently. For example, I feel that given my genetics, I have done well as a powerlifter. I view lifting as a 2nd job. Workouts are prioritized, meals are prepped, programs are followed and there is a feedback loop for continuous improvement. I even track the barbell velocity of my lifts. Results follow. Though it’s more abstract, I feel given my template I have been a decent father to my kids. I seek out knowledge, make distraction free time for each kid, admit my missteps, prioritize repair rather than being right and focus on the attachment I have with my kids before anything else. Time will tell if this means anything. What am I getting at? If I want this blog/substack/whatever to be the best I can make it, then I need to prioritize it. I reread Atomic Habits recently, and have a new found zest for writing.

In 2024 I am committing to posting weekly. I know, I know, many newsletters post several times per week. That’s too much like a job for me. And I left my job 5 years ago. So weekly will have to do. I’ll build the habit before optimizing. I am playing around with different topics at this point. There will be new companies profiled, relevant updates to companies I own or follow closely, book reviews, and a quarterly performance recap. Other topics I am playing around with are around fitness, how I knew I wasn’t cut out for the corporate world and some more details on what it’s like to be a full time investor.

Thanks for sticking around. You could do so many other things with your time and you chose to read this. I appreciate it.

Dean