From €3,000 to €19,849: five years betting on a single stock

Five years jumping from stock to stock starting with €3,000

€3,000 in 2009. €19,849 at the end of 2014. Between those two figures there is no fund manager, no team of analysts, no packaged product: there is a single person jumping from one stock to another with an average holding period of 63 days per stock. The stated goal was far more ambitious — turning €3,000 into €300,000 for retirement — but the scoreboard after the first round says the capital multiplied by more than six, with over 500% in gross gains. Far from the dream. And yet, a result many a fund would sign with both hands.

The method: ten candidates and a single bet at a time

The mechanics take two lines to explain and years to execute. You keep a list of ten stocks that look interesting, pick just one, put all available capital into it and wait for the moment to jump to the next. The selection is openly discretionary: it weighs what each company seems to offer and, above all, the _intuition_ of the person deciding.

The journey began in 2009 with Natra and continued with Codere, Pescanova, Iberpapel, Rovi, Ence, CIE Automotive, Acciona and Tubacex. The first steps were in small companies, the classic penny stocks, always hunting for the best value for money. Then came internationalisation: Crédit Agricole, Exxon Mobil, Alcoa, Arcelor Mittal, Faes Farma, KBC Groupe, Consol Energy, Mediobanca, Nabors Industries and, in the final stage, Apollo Group.

The two star wins and the two holes in the account

The balance sheet accompanying the experiment includes round trades and others that hurt just to read. CIE Automotive contributed +75% and KBC Groupe +66%, the two best in the record. At the other end, Alcoa left -30% and Arcelor Mittal -19%. This is not the CV of a stock market messiah: it is a track record with costly mistakes and notably good wins.

There is one detail that explains better than any table the level of concentration the strategy reaches. At one point there were €16,396 available to invest entirely in Tubacex, and the investor himself admits he was reluctant to put it all into a stock of that nature. The other half of his brain answered with a repeated argument: the capital had started as money he could afford to _lose_.

Can you go from €3,000 to €300,000 with a single stock?

That is where the disagreement begins. The harshest rebuttal does not dispute the return achieved, but the procedure: concentrating your entire wealth in a single company is equivalent, according to critics, to _Russian roulette_, because it only takes one stock going bankrupt or being delisted for the account to go to zero. The retirement dream then becomes the retirement nightmare.

To that objection is added another of a practical nature that is not always taken into account: capital gains are settled with the tax office every year. If one year closes with profits and the next you put everything into a stock that tanks, you still have to answer to the tax agency. With what money? The most repeated advice is to set aside the initial capital plus inflation, diversify when the figure approaches €50,000 and not gamble your entire wealth on a single card.

Against that, the protagonist's reasoning has its own internal logic: if the money was set in motion as an acceptable bet, the price of keeping the dream alive is accepting that one day a bad stock will come along.

The vertigo of risking €17,082 in a single trade

The numbers keep growing and with them the discomfort. Selling Duro Felguera left €13,255 available. Then came Almirall: entry at 10.75 with €17,082, exit at 12.58 and €19,849 in cash. Each jump multiplies the amount put on the table, and that changes the psychology of the person putting it there. Risking €3,000 is not the same as risking the figure that would already justify buying a car.

November 2014: €19,849 and back to square one

The first round closed with the Almirall trade, with over 500% in accumulated gross gains since 2009. The decision was explained without frills: the heart wanted to keep going, the head wanted to stop, and in the stock market the head rules. «Money won on the stock market is borrowed money,» they say in the sector, and whoever won it preferred not to give it all back.

The amount is set aside for a child's university education and parked in funds with little stock market exposure, while its author warns that he does not manage anyone's accounts or give advice — that is what institutions registered with the CNMV are for — and that everyone is responsible for their own decisions.

The uncomfortable question remains. If the system works, why stop? And if it is repeated, what happens the day the list of ten candidates includes the name that never trades again?