Making money from mistakes

STOCK PICKING

James Thomson, manager of the £129.8m Rathbone Global Opportunities fund, highlights his personal ingredients for successful stockpicking.

Managing the first ten years of the Rathbone Global Opportunities fund has been a rollercoaster ride but this job requires adaptability, and a willingness to learn from one’s failures. Having picked stocks over several business cycles and market shocks, a few lessons stand out; those attributes I want in an investment. However, it is my stockpicking failures that are the most informative. Rather than dismissing these failures, I have used them to create a list of ingredients that I need to avoid. This is not going to be ‘Stock-Picking 101’, more a review of the framework I use to iden...