Introduction

There are three main parts of my life: family, the stock market and politics. This book is focused on the stock market – more than 50 years of a fascinating hobby: from my first investment aged 15, through to becoming what I like to describe as ‘a serious private investor’. This period also included the more recent dozen years of writing the ‘My Portfolio’ column in FT Money (more than 200 articles).

I wrote this book because I want to share with you my investing principles from the last 50 years. As I was writing it I looked back over that time at all my transactions, many hundreds of them; sometimes it feels as if I have owned every quoted share! I have made many mistakes – I share these with honesty and in some cases painful embarrassment, but I have learned from the negatives and because of this there have been more successes than failures. This book takes the interested or potential private investor through my years of investing – the gains and the losses, the anecdotes and the experiences. The book details my guiding principles.

One key point that I want to emphasise is that you don’t need to be wealthy to invest. I started with little capital – my first shares cost £45 in 1957 and the experience was a total disaster. Today I have many individual holdings worth £100,000+. An article in the Financial Times in December 2003 disclosed that my Individual Savings Account (ISA) had grown by then to more than £1 million in value – pleasingly, since then it has progressed further.

I have called the book How to Make a Million – Slowly because it sums up my approach to stock market success – building up a portfolio brick by brick, share by share over many years. I believe the long-term holding of shares in UK PLCs is something that is worthwhile in a broader national context. There are those who treat the stock market as a casino – constantly dealing in and out – usually not knowing or caring what activities the companies they buy and sell are engaged in. Good luck to them – that is their choice – but it is not my way. Nor do I believe that day trading such as this is the way to success for most people. I like to get to know and understand the companies I invest in – I feel proud to own a small part of many fine businesses.

I have included a small number of my Financial Times articles which have been published in the past 15 years. I’ve done this because they illustrate well my investing philosophy. Looking back at these articles I’m pleased – and sometimes surprised – at the ongoing relevance of my writings, although there have been some avoidable howlers. Although the companies may have changed, the principles in these extracts remain relevant for today’s investor.

In this book I have distilled a number of key investing lessons which I have developed over the years – hopefully private investors will find them useful. You learn about dividend yields, price earnings ratios, avoiding losses and ‘when to sell’. I explain my approach and draw out my thoughts and conclusions.

I hope others get the same pleasure from their stock market investing as I have, and that they benefit from my scars and my successes. Common sense and above all patience are the keys to building your fortune.