I started in August 2005 with Armarda & Golden Agri-Resouces

I started investing in August 2005. I purchased two counters, Armarda and Golden Agri-Resouces. I was pretty green then. After reading the book, The intelligent investor by Benjamin Graham. My mind was set on value investing.

I was a trained engineer. I knew practically nothing about finance or investment technicalities then. The only accounting module I did in university didn't help much. The intelligent investor merely paced the way and set the mindset straight on investing (as against speculation). But it is not the purpose for the book to deal with technical details on investment or finance.

However, I'm too eager to dive into the stock market. I couldn't wait to pick up more adequate financial background by reading up books on, say financial statement analysis etc.

Thus my stock screening criteria was very simple, price to NAV (Net asset value). So long as a stock is going for less than its book, is still profitable, it got into my watchlist.

I bought Armarda (an IT service provider focusing on banking services) at 5.5 cents and subsequently bought more at 5 cents because by then, it is trading at nearly 50% NAV and its cash holdings per share was 5 cents! Imagine paying 50 cents for a dollar bill, what a discount! It was only much later that I found I was naive then, to think this way.

I then bought Golden Agri-Resources (Indonesian Palm Oil Plantation Company) at 41 cents. It is also trading at nearly 50% NAV. The reason I bought this was different from Armarda. I liked its business. Back in August 2005, I saw the potential for palm oil to be used as an alternative ingredient for bio-diesel. I was sure then that it'll become gold grown on trees in 10 years down the road. I was subsequently proven right, but fortunately, I didn't have to wait for 10 years.