I’m Merkado Barkada, ask me anything! (PART 1)

To celebrate breaching the 1 million weekly readers mark, I asked you all to ask me anything, and offered a ?200 Grab Food voucher for any questions that were picked to be answered. You came through big time, and I had nearly 100 great questions to choose from. Here’s the first set of questions in what will probably be a two- or three-part series.

• Mac:  Do you see yourself doing MB for the rest of your life? 
• MB:  Love this vaguely threatening question. I don’t know if I’ll be doing this exact configuration of MB work for the rest of my life, but I also don’t want to pretend that I know exactly how my life will go. Five years ago I had no idea that the newsletter would grow to produce content that a million people read every week. The way life works is humbling. I’m happy now, and so long as doing MB makes me happy, I don’t intend to change.
   
• spaceman spiff:  What are your top 3 learnings on how to have 1M readers through a daily anonymous newsletter in a niche field saturated with existing experts?
• MB:  The biggest lesson is an affirmation of several sayings that play on the same theme: “hard work beats talent”, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”, “consistency is key”, and “80% of success is just showing up”. There are thousands of better investors, thousands of better writers, thousands of analysts with bigger followings and networks, but the thing that sets me apart is that I do the work every single day. I get up in the middle of the night, read the disclosures, and write (from scratch) the day’s work every single day. I think (but don’t know) that consistency has been a big part of my success in growing MB to this point.
   
• Ron Batuigas:  Does news gathering really make you a better trader/investor?
• MB:  100%. The past 5 years of doing this daily have made me a better investor. I don’t think reading the news will help every investing style. It’s irrelevant to technical traders. But as a long-term trader, reading the news daily has opened my eyes to an angle that I had not considered before: opportunistic buying. Before doing MB, I’d buy and hold my stocks for the long run, but I was not great at adding to my winners and cutting my losers. Now that I’m constantly bathing in news and reviewing my portfolio on a daily basis, I’ve found that I’m better positioned to lean into buying opportunities for stocks that I’m already holding to make those returns better. News gathering has also filled in so many gaps in my overall understanding of how things work that I’m far less confused on a daily basis, and that level of comfort helps me trade with more confidence.
   
• VincentBongGogh:   Which PSE stock inspired you to start the journey? 
• MB:   Jollibee [JFC]. At the time I was eating Champ burgers once or twice a week, and bought JFC because I heard a few rumors about how quickly JFC was planning to expand and it seemed like a no-brainer. That was well over 10 years ago. Deep into The Before Times. I bought so long ago that I panic-sold my JFC at a marginal gain in the aftermath of the COVID crash. 
   
• Juan Luke:  Why did you leave your job as a corporate lawyer?
• MB:  COVID took a lot of the shine off of the corporate lawyer “feel” for me. I found that I loved working within a team to solve real-world problems, but the lockdown and all the work-from-home really dragged a lot of the fun out of performing the corporate lawyer role. Sitting at home, chopping up contracts, not talking to anyone for hours on end--it started to feel like law firm life and I started to feel like I was being oppressed by the billable hour, even though I was salary.  
   
• Steven:  What’s your “go-to” drink? 
• MB:  Coffee if we're just talking about regular life. But if we’re talking about drinks with dinner or out with friends, my favorite is Pale Pilsen for beer or a Moscow Mule (vodka with ginger beer) if I’m out at a place that could serve it. SO GOOD.