My career background is:
B.Ec (Syd Uni) > Accountant > Compliance Manager > Risk Manager … all within the Global Investment Management and Global Investment Banking fields based in Sydney and Hong Kong. After over 20 years I retired in my early-mid 40’s to focus on my personal life… physical and mental health, and personal investments. Now early fifties.
My investing background is:
Been researching and investing since Uni days … from shares, FX, derivatives, cryptocurrencies and real estate. Been through the booms and bust of dotcom and GFC. In 2007, I was a millionaire investor, as well as working in a lucrative role in investment banking. In 2008, lost it all and I was nearly broke (even worse, nearly into negative equity as I was heavily leveraged). In early 2009, I was unemployed! My current portfolio and net worth was built from scratch from mid 2009 after the disaster of the GFC.
I have meet all the current RAC board members and some of the previous ones. I can’t comment on their level of investment in RAC, except to give an opinion that I see Dr T as a self-directed individual investor first and foremost. That’s how he came across RAC in the first place. It was an investment for him and a deep conviction investment at that. As Dr T said previously, he was retired before RAC and he looks forward to getting back to retirement after RAC … in his words “RAC is one and done” for him.
Other RAC executives may not have that same investor mindset, however prefer to focus on their careers. This is the same feeling I get when I talk to successful bankers, doctors and lawyers and other professionals about investing. They are so successful at being bankers, doctors and lawyers that they don’t have the time or interest to spend on investing. Which takes dedicated time and effort, as you all would know. May be that’s the key to becoming a successful individual investor … you need to be unsatisfied and unsuccessful in your current career, hence you have a stronger motivation to seek financial success elsewhere.
My biotech investing background:
My first (and greatest) biotech investment story was applying for and receiving shares in the CSL IPO back in 1994. 12 months later it doubled and I felt like an absolute genius investor at just 21 years old!
My greatest biotech investment failure was selling out of CSL when I doubled my money 12 months after the IPO. Years later that initial $ investment in CSL would be just one months of accrued CSL divided now ☹️.
In hindsight I have been investing in biotechs on and off for 30 years now.
My most profitable biotech investment story is IMU. Similar to RAC, I seeked out one on one time with the IMU CEO (Leslie Chong) and Paul Hopper (Chairman and Founder of IMU), as well as various IMU researchers and executives globally. I was fortunate that they spent some time with me in late 2010’s. Leslie even met me in HK when we were coincidentally staying in the same hotel. I was so inexperienced with science and medical research that Leslie had to explain to me the definition of preclinical vs clinical trials, in-vivo vs in-vitro and phase 1, phase 2 and phase 3 trials. Paul Hopper drilled into me the mantra … “biotech investing takes patient capital”.
After doing my research and meeting the IMU executives and researchers one on one, I decide to invest heavily in IMU from around 2017 in the 1c range.
I was such a strong and large support of IMU that I was even invited to exclusive and expensive broker lunches and institutional investor dinners held by IMU. I was one of the few individual investors invited to the dinner. Seated next to me were representatives from some of the top global investment banks and investment houses. I keep in touch with them regularly since that dinner. I don’t include this to brag but to provide some colour on how serious I take my investment research, how deep I try to gain access and the level of investment conviction I take when I do have a strong positive view on a stock.
Hmmm, that reminds me … I am yet to be invited to any exclusive RAC lunches or dinners. When I met with Dr Tillett in Sydney I buy him coffee and lunch …. not one cent of RAC funds were spent . Side note: Dr Tillett was very frugal in his lunch and drinks order even when I was paying! This gave me a lot of comfort on how he treats RAC shareholder funds.
My IMU investing story: (I shared this in the IMU HC threads recently)
Some of you may remember me as an active member of the IMU HC threads from under 1c (2017-2019) to the highs of 62c in 2021. The last time I popped into the IMU threads was in the lead up to the well hated SPP in late 2023. I loved that SPP and bought my full $30k allocation when around 50% was passed up. I would have taken more if I was able to! I was so disinterested in IMU at the time (after timely selling out for a profit) that I wasn’t even following the stock or HC threads. It was actually@Davisitewho pointed out to me the huge drop in IMU due to the cap raise, likely due to short sellers. I then investigated further. I got interested when IMU hit 6c while the institutional placement was priced and completed at 8.3c. I was mainly interested in the very generous free IMU 1:1 SPP options and didn’t care about the fundamentals… it was a pure short term trade / arbitrage on the SPP v placement price.
I have known @Mason14 for a few years now through our common interest in Biotech investing. From chatting to him one on one and debating the merits of Imugene (IMU) back in 2020-2021. I was in IMU and Mason was not, but I did my very best to try to convince Mason he should take a position in IMU.
I decided to sell out of the majority of my IMU position close to the highs of 60c to 40c back in late 2021. Lucky for me, I was sitting on a huge profit on IMU.
Part of the reason I sold out of IMU was Mason shared his own compelling research that it was time for me to get out of IMU. Other part was my own portfolio and risk management.
At the time, Mason also shared his thoughts on IMU in HC, so anyone could have definitely also profited from it at the highs and taken profits at that time if they only paid attention.
IMU is now 6.9c (from high of 62c) with over 7 billion shares on issue.
Mason’s research reports is something to definitely pay attention to … it pays off. At a minimum, you get a free and valuable education on science.Mason does deep fundamental scientific research (PhD level) and writes in simple easy to understand language (layman’s terms).
Sometimes … It’s not what you know, but who you know or who you read!
Don’t hold onto stale stocks in your portfolio. This cost you better opportunities. Why wait for IMU to redo 1c to 62c again, when there are other opportunities, and I argue easier opportunities for this levels of return.
I love this quote (below) from the late, great Charlie Munger. Warren Buffett mentions this quote a lot when he talks about his biggest investing mistake and regrets, ie it is not the investments you made, but the investments you didn’t make but should have and had every opportunity to do so because you were informed about it (RitzyBusiness: especially when someone has been kind enough to share their deep and detailed fundamental research on forums).
Note: Besides @Mason14 I would definitely add @davisite / @RaceOncology to the list of HC posters to read. At the very least add their research and comments as another data point for you to considered along with your own deep research and diligence, as I did when I met with IMU and RAC executives, as well as other biotech executives.
My RAC investing story:
- started researching and accumulating RAC from December 2019. First trade was at 15c! Funnily enough I was introduced to RAC through a comment on the IMU HC thread at the time. I think the comment was something along the lines of … there is a company director commenting on the RAC threads. This really piqued my curiosity.
- Participated in all the capital raises I was able to.
- Been sharing the RAC story to family and friends since 30c in early 2020.
- Bought more on market today.
- Probably buy more tomorrow.
- … story to be continued … hopefully it ends with “We all lived happily ever after”.
Hope this gives a sense of my background and authenticity. I would like to stress my many failures (and not the few successes) in the above story. These failures, I hope, make me a better and more cautious investor.
Have a very pleasant day and week ahead. Hope to read your stories as well.
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