How to turn £1 into £6,427
Warning: requires patience and conviction, very rare ingredients in the investment world, without which the recipe will not turn out as hoped...
Invest £1 in 10 shares of Betfair (at £0.10*) in February 2000
Sell 10 shares of Betfair (at £13.20) in April 2006
Hold GBP deposit (at 5%) until November 2006
Convert GBP to USD (at 1.905) in November 2006
Invest $258.72 in 862.4 shares of Weatherbill (at $0.30*) in November 2006
Sell 862.4 shares of Weatherbill** (at $12.00*) in November 2013
Convert USD to GBP (at 1.61) in November 2013
Works out to just under 90% IRR over almost 14 years.*** Pretty sure that beats Buffett, Soros, etc. but to be fair would not scale to billions of dollars and brokers/traders would hate this type of strategy as they would get bored with it…and past returns are no indication of future returns (which of course why it is such a mystery as to why pretty much the entire multi-trillion dollar investment industry allocates capital based almost entirely on past returns…)
Oh and for anyone interested my next trade was:
Convert GBP to EUR
Invest in Anthemis Group SA
Notes:
* split adjusted
** name changed to Climate Corporation, acquired by Monsanto
*** only possible as a result of the amazing vision and talent of entrepreneurs like Ed Wray, Bert Black, David Friedberg, Siraj Khaliq and their teams...












