OMH. Buying my position first for what seems like an inevitable rather than waiting for certainty.

 I've read a bunch of books on investing and somehow have gained the thought process that its better to buy and wait, rather than wait for a trend that seems certain before buying. The latter being more technical analysis and the former being just giving up on timing the market. So which is better? 


Its come across my mind in short moments. Really it would have been better for there to be certainty, to wait for the real estate market to truly find a bottom, before actually committing. (Chinas real estate will influence steel demand, hence improve the demand dynamics for ferroalloy, a key input into steel).


When the port was damaged in the hurricane and silicomanganese price spiked. I decided to jump in and use my margin to get around 30k shares. I paid about RM1.5 per share, I reasoned that I might miss the boat and the real estate market was half a year away from its bottom. Silicomanganese price spiked and  came down and broke its bottom. The share price is at RM1.15 thereabouts right now, but the real estate bottom seems certain now. It's highly likely that there will be a rapid rise in property prices by the end of the year as stimulus kicks in and the developers find their bearings. The certainty has come, and share prices are still at their bottoms. I guess this really is a case of whether the market is efficient or not. In the case of a company like OMH, its pretty inefficient.

So was I right to buy in when the market was moving with the news of the damage to the port? I'm not sure about that. In hindsight, it seems unclear, maybe it was better to have waited for some more substantial news to come in. That the market in China has truly bottomed.


Sometimes the stock just doesn't react, like in 2020, it took several months of high steel prices before the stock price moved. Or in 2017 when I bought it, the steel market had already moved in a substantial way, but OMH, due to the ramp up in production, was trailing behind the market. Sometimes it jumps right away, like the damage to the port. Its so hard to tell, maybe its better not to try and chase profits the way I did. Moving first because I was afraid of missing the boat. Perhaps it was better to have let some of my foresight to anticipate a better entry point.


In hindsight, its so hard to say. But I will do that next time.

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