How I Think About Investing
I bought my first stocks in fifth grade.
One was a company called Arotech, a lithium-ion battery manufacturer. I'd become convinced that electric cars were the future, and this felt like the way in. I was directionally right. Completely wrong on the company. The right answer, as it turned out, was a little startup called Tesla that I wasn't paying attention to.
The other was Altria, the tobacco company. I'd just come back from my first trip to Europe, stunned by how many people (the French) were smoking. I thought there was some money to be made. I was ten years old and thinking about consumer behavior in foreign markets. Looking back, that instinct has shaped how I think about investing more than almost anything else: watch what people actually do, not what they say they'll do.
Altria has returned roughly 1,200% in price since 2009. With dividends reinvested, closer to 2,000%. A $10,000 investment at the start of 2009 would be worth somewhere around $200,000 today. I didn't hold it that long (and I had nowhere near that amount money) but the thesis was right. The lesson was about patience, not stock picking.
Two grandfathers, two lessons
My Grampa, Bryan Mahady Sr., my dad's father, owned a car dealership in Corning, New York. He was a small business owner who built something real in a small upstate town. His most famous line on the lot, when a customer was trying to lowball him: "I'd drive it off a cliff before I'd sell it to you for that price." I used to think he was “mean”, but as I grew up I realized he was sarcastic, hilarious, and authentic. He never really knew his father, Dr. Stephen Mahady, because he died when he was very young. He served in the Army as a First Lieutenant, graduating from the Army's Air Defense School. He relocated to the Corning/Painted Post area in 1972 after working as a district manager for the Chrysler Corporation. He then purchased Redfield Motor Company in Corning where he ran the local Chrysler/Plymouth dealership for 26 years, retiring in 1998. From what my Dad has told me over the years he had some really good years and some really bad years when he owned the dealership. I'm sure he felt the stresses of being a small business owner and the satisfaction of being his own boss. My Dad once told me a line that I'll never forget. My Dad worked at the dealership growing up and would help out wherever he was needed. One day he saw my Grampa getting into a heated pricing negotiation where tensions were high. He asked my Grampa how he could put up with someone being so aggressive and disrespectful to him. My Grampa told my Dad, "Bryan, I smile and I try to take as much money as I possibly can out of their pocket. That's how I get even." I've always admired the fact that he owned that business and didn't take shit from anybody.
My Granddad, Bill Scharle, my mom's father, was a chemical engineer who joined a natural gas and chemical company called Air Products when it had roughly 200 employees. He retired when it had 20,000. All 38 years of his business career were spent at Air Products. When people asked him the secret to his success, he kept it simple: "The two most important things are keeping your faith in God and hard work."
That simplicity undersells the life. Early in his career he was sent to work at a top-secret Air Products hydrogen plant in Florida, supporting NASA during the space race. He rose from young engineer to Vice President of Engineering, Operations and Manufacturing, and ultimately retired in 1989 as Group VP of the Process Systems Group. In retirement he didn't slow down. He served on hospital boards, nursing home boards, Catholic Charities, and the President's Council at DeSales University. He managed volunteer construction projects across the Diocese of Allentown. He was recognized with engineering awards, a Distinguished Graduate Award from his high school, and a Catholic Charities Gala honor. He and my grandmother traveled the world.
I'd like to think I apply my Grampa's conviction and my Granddad's hard work to not only my investing but my life.
Both of these men took real risk with real skin in the game. That's the thing I respect most in an investor, an entrepreneur, or anyone building something. Nassim Taleb's Skin in the Game crystallized this for me: the people worth listening to are the ones who bear the consequences of being wrong. Everyone else is just noise.
The framework
I don't have a spreadsheet model I run every company through. I have a set of questions I can't stop asking.
Does this business have a moat? Not a temporary advantage but a structural one. Switching costs so high that customers never leave. A brand so embedded in daily life that the alternative feels strange. A network that gets more valuable with every new user. The investors I admire most, Charlie Munger, Chris Hohn, Warren Buffett, all start here. Everything else is secondary.
Can I see it in the world around me? Peter Lynch called this "buy what you know," but I think it goes deeper than that. When I see an Amazon truck, I think about the e-commerce network effect it has. When someone beside me is doom-scrolling Instagram, I think about Meta's ad pricing power. When I fill up my car, I think about the pipeline infrastructure that got the gas there (especially relevant as I write this. The US war with Iran has caused oil prices to skyrocket). The best investment ideas I've ever had came from paying attention to the world, not from a Bloomberg terminal.
Would I be comfortable owning this for ten years? Not holding but owning. There's a difference. Holding implies you're waiting to sell. Owning means you'd be fine if the stock market closed tomorrow and you couldn't check the price. If the answer is no, I usually don't buy it. If the answer is an enthusiastic yes, I buy more than feels comfortable. Buffet has famously said, “Our favorite holding period is forever.”
Is there a real person behind this business? I have enormous respect for entrepreneurs. People who put their own capital, reputation, and time on the line to build something. When I see a founder-led company, or a CEO who has most of their net worth in the stock, I pay attention differently. Taleb is right: aligned incentives change everything.
Lessons learned
Arotech wasn't my last wrong-company-right-thesis bet. I've been early, late, and occasionally just wrong. Quick scoreboard check on a few wins and losses I want to share. There is more but I think these are the most notable.
Palantir. I bought it in early Covid when it IPO’d, sold it after a quick run up to buy some more Bitcoin. Lesson learned: If the original thesis for buying it is still in tact, there is no reason to sell. Let your winners ride.
Twitter - I bought it back in college because I loved using it. I owe a lot of my investing journey to following smart people on Twitter who share their ideas freely to the world. A thorough comparison against Facebook would have been the prudent thing to have done before buying. Meta delivered massive long-term returns — turning a $1,000 IPO investment into over $15,000 today (roughly 15x) — thanks to its enormous scale, highly profitable advertising business, and successful pivots like mobile ads and AI. In contrast, Twitter's stock showed limited growth, stagnated for years, and ultimately delivered mediocre returns before being taken private at $54.20/share in 2022, far underperforming Meta's trajectory (excerpt pulled from Grok). Lesson: Know the competitors just as well as if not better.
Bitcoin - Went down the rabbit hole in 2020 and bought my first bitcoin at ~$10,000. Have not sold since. May write a post on my Bitcoin journey to contextualize just how much blood, sweat, and tears have come from diamond handing this through extreme volatility. Lesson learned: Know what you own.
Oklo, Rocketlab, Google - Multi-baggers I’ve hit on.
What I'm trying to build
This site is my public investing journal. Company notes, framework posts, book takeaways, a living document of how I think and how that thinking evolves over time. Not tips. Not predictions. Just honest thinking, written down, so I can look back in ten years and see where I was right, where I was wrong, and whether I got better.
My GOAT, Charlie Munger's Poor Charlie's Almanack is the best investing book I've ever read. Not because it tells you what to buy, but because it tells you how to think. That's what I'm going for here.
First post. More to come.
