I have not held EFG for a while now and was lucky enough to see...

I have not held EFG for a while now and was lucky enough to see common-sense and get out at a profit. Nevertheless, I have plenty of spare time at the moment because I am on 'holidays' from 'work' so I thought it would be interesting to look through and read through my sparse contributions to HC.

This is post is not so much so the sake of readers

(its information can be found in plenty of books and past posts, as well as the fact that nobody reads this forum because EFG is all but dead)

but perhaps for my own personal reading and interest sometime in the future.

From my first post about EFG,

'Anyway, this ones a long term hold for me. I'll be cashing out at around 30-40 cents in a couple of years.'

Delirium - What the hell was I thinking. Quite simply, I was not. I was too busy looking at the numbers. Looking at past share price does help, I think, when looking to make short term trades, within the space of a week or a few days. However, when looking to find the true value of a share, i.e one that is not depended on past potential but future potential, I quite literally make sure never to look at charts etc, or anything that gives me the sense that this is going to be a 'multi-bagger'.

Naivity - I am still young and naive. I will always be young and naive. The only way that I can compensate for this is to read and talk to as many people involved directly and indirectly in the industry as possible. This also means going beyond the bounds of people who have nothing to do with the related industry. The sooner that I stopped kidding myself that I knew it all, the more informed my decisions became and the more money I made with my investments.

Normalism - What I mean here is that I looked at what what floating on top rather than what was lying beneath the surface. If it is correct to say that we are a 'consumer society' then it would be correct to say that we live transient lifestyles. In other words, when we are looking at the screen in front of us we are tuned to see only the graphics and text etc. What we fail to see is what HC really is - its essentials. Once you start to read everything very slowly and investigate what lies behind it you soon pick up the 'narrative' of the story/company.

Remedy - My definition of 'narrative' is probably something akin to knowledge. For example, when somebody asks you about your life I presume that you could talk about it for hours on end, from your first memories all the way to your current experiences. Because you know the story, or narrative, and know how each episode links in together you have a fair idea of what when wrong and a fair understanding of what you could have done differently to change those outcomes. Moreover, when you can start seeing that the same episode happening all over again, you can take immediate action to avoid it.

The one caveat, however, is that a narrative is discursive and thus, history never repeats itself. Nevertheless, finding value in shares, perhaps, does not so much depend on being able to read balance sheets etc and technical analysis, which I learnt a while ago, but depends more on reading between the lines and numbers and talking to more people about the company and thus, learning to engage in the story of a share. If you cannot talk about a share as you can about your own life then you probably do not know enough about it.

If I had have learnt the 'narrative' of EFG before I bought the shares I would be alot richer now because I would not have bought it. Reading about a company is just as interesting and exciting as holding a share which is why I know now do it first.

My sell sentiment for EFG is due to that fact that the capital return, once the decision is made to wind the company up, is probably going to be less than expected and a long time coming. Also, even if Wingate does somehow manage to get control of the reigns it is going to take a long long time to restore true value to this share.

I could go on but that is more than enough for the moment.