Savings came from collecting beer cans
As part of the Financial Post’s Young Money series, we asked young readers to give us a glimpse into their portfolio and savings strategy. Today, Christopher O’Connor, 21, talks about his investing strategy af ter becoming the youngest person in Canada to complete the Canadian Investment Funds Course licence at age 16. He’ll be attending the University of Monaco in September to study international management.
How did you get into investing? I began co-piloting a small trading account with my uncle when I was 13 after an article I read on the stock market sparked my interest in the idea of being able to make money by making smart decisions. After speaking with family, friends and professionals who knew a little bit about investing, I decided to dabble using my own money — a very crucial point in the learning curve. You feel every dollar grow or disappear when it’s your own!
What are you investing for? I invest for my goals. Each goal has unique characteristics that help me define and tweak my investment criteria. Recently I was investing to help pay for my MBA at the University of Monaco. Retrospectively, the majority of my investing career has been framed to help pay for school by growing stagnant cash earned from jobs. At one point, collecting beer cans was a crucial part of my undergraduate savings plan.
I cannot stress enough how important goals are with respect to investing and personal finance. Arbitrary investing leads to greed, miscalculations and an unhealthy mentality of “how much is enough” when referring to profit and returns. Eventually my focus will shift from education to lifestyle investing where retirement, real estate and other assets become part of the picture.
What do you invest in? Firstly, when investing for retirement I prefer large-cap North American equities paying a healthy dividend with stable long-term growth prospects. Royal Bank, for example, is a great specimen for a healthy company with stability and excellent growth prospects at home and in international markets.
Global opportunities are available close to home with the help of American Depository Receipts or ADRs where international companies list on a North American stock exchange making it easier to access and more liquid with less currency risk.
In any scenario I tend to like large-cap companies more than small firms since their share prices have less volatility and a more logical reaction to market news. How have your returns been in the
last year? The last year has been spectacular for Lloyds Banking Group and lacklustre for Apple, which I recently exited to allocate elsewhere. But total gains of 110% for Lloyds so far and over 50% for Apple, they are two of my star-studded stocks. I believe in Apple longterm but I now have better places for the capital that was allocated there. Lloyds is a great opportunity to own Britain’s largest bank for only a few bucks a share.
My one-year overall portfolio return is about 35% taking in to account all other positions