Great and deep thoughts. Maybe a little bit of existential crisis in there too! Hahaha

I have a similar plan. I invest for two reasons;

1. The goal of a passive income stream from 60. This will probably shift to etf's as the years approach.

2. The challenge. I don't want just etf's today. I want some intellectual challenge also. FDV is a great example. I intend to hold until its a cash spinner or the CEO moves on.

I think we're discussing price vs value maybe. I look to underatand value, but look to buy on price. And sometimes just look at the price because i can, as it challenges my thesis in some ways and it also distracts me from the tinnitus of life.

@Bushmanpat ill give it a bit of a go, being retired now for about 3 years. well-- it depends, as a lot of things in investing do. when I retired I didn't have a good feel for my expenses so was too conservative on portfolio mix. Of course, the correct mix in part depends on the size of wealth (ex house)/spend as well as other things. my spending is lower than expected, but most of that is non-discretionary-- medical, car repairs, food etc. Having said that my call on income as an asset class is not that great. if you are active enough you can keep 1-2 years of spend in a TD and optimise the rest of your portfolio for growth. that is what i would change if i could go back, not that it's been a huge issue.

the conclusion i have come to, is to buy quality companies at great prices with the view to holding them a very long time. the tax effect plus the time and effort to operate a trading portfolio, i have found is a waste of time outside of being a hobby interest.

I aim to have invested in a great bunch of companies (including o/s), at great prices, with long run ways, then sit on my arse and harvest some capital at opportune times and bank a smallish but growing dividend flow. from time to time curate the list when required. to be clear the income vrs the rest is not a relevant call for me, so that is a discovery. ive back solved an earnings rate of 5-10% to live comfortably, so my willingness to take on risk is governed in part by that. As Munger said dont take on more risk than you require, thats stupid (or something along those lines)

of course we all have a different view of what constitutes a great company and what is a good price to pay for it. thats up to you.

deciding what type of investor you are, what strategy you can execute and how much risk makes sense for you are all critical.

hope this makes some sense.

to add a bit, the other thing i have learned is to be your own master. what do i mean by that? a large source of wealth destruction comes from other investors. they are like sirens on the rocks calling you with huge historic returns, implying your style and skills or both are no good. if you pay heed to these guys (and girls) it can be a slippery slope to misery. for example, how many people in the bull market sprout their numbers as being better than Buffet (ive seen about 3-4 so far) taunting people to match their performance, and change your process to their successful one, well don't confuse brains with a bull market, they have disappeared as they did before. the moral to this rant is be true to yourself and measure your success against your own benchmark, another munger anecdote

@Solvetheriddle you're spot on with the siren calls! I always remind myself when I hear market predictions or what I should be overweight or underweight etc is that these calls are made on a timeframe of months, maybe a year or so at the very longest. I'm a very slothful investor, so I see something, think about it, get busy with other things, forget about it, remember it to think about it some more, vacillate about whether I should act or not then ultimately do nothing. Which is probably a good trait for a long term investor. Don't interrupt compounding, right? The number of times I've heard successful investors saying they wished they'd held on to more things, even the dogs, because their biggest mistake was selling out to early.

I guess this thread is to clarify in my own head what I'm trying to achieve as much as gaining insight from those wiser and more experienced than I. I'm starting to see myself investing through the lifecycle of a company. Get in early at a good price, watch the company grow and mature, then harvest the cash as it transitions from a growth company to a mature cash generating machine.

I guess I'm trying to work out a) why I like watching the share price of companies that I own and b) do I actually want to do anything with that information. The answer is most likely a) ego and b) no.

And I'm always aware of the tax implications of trading. I think everyone's Strawman index would look different if it was after tax returns!

Yes I think the after tax benefit of longer term investing is much under appreciated. So often I see (or hear a broker encourage!) of "profit taking" where someone is excited over selling at a high and rebuying a few months later for less. 9 times out of 10 if you do a quick calc in your head of the costs of the transactions including tax and they are rarely better off and usually much worse off than holding on. Worse is that in my experience often the stock continues to rise after you sell and you never get back in (Xero, PME, etc) Im happy to put the ego in the back pocket and keep an after tax focus for the portfolio. But like you I always check prices and it makes me feel better to look at how the portfolio has grown over time periods of day, week, qtr, year etc. One thing that helps for me is to use sharesight and to check the portfolio performance rather than individual stocks as much as I can. I use different categories to sub divide the porfolio further and as much as I can I look at groups of stocks rather than get too caught up in the individual day to day performance.

I love watching the share price way too often as well.

Also a big shareholder user, have a bunch of different custom groups including benchmarking by market / index (so I can see if I am under or outperforming various indexes for portions of the portfolio), one where I track where I first came across the stock (eg. A forum, newsletter etc) and one with a bunch of categories that only mean something to me including: Dirty, Exit Lounge, Feed & Forget, Sleeping Dogs, Penalty Box and Overweight. I also find that zooming in and out on the time period is very helpful as well (can’t look at “since yesterday’s close” too often).

I just worry that sometimes the share price is a bit like the flashing lights, rewarding sounds and small rewards of a poker machine. But I keep trying to tell myself that holding individual shares isn’t just my preferred form of gambling (I never have and never will participate in any other form of wagering).