Over the weekend, I participated in a three-day virtual workshop with Phil Town and his committed teachers and coaches.These are my experiences from the workshop.
First, let me clarify that I am not affiliated with Phil Town or his website in any way. I did not get paid to write this, and I do not receive any compensation if anyone signs up for his workshop based on this post. I paid for the workshop just like you will if you want to attend, meaning that this is my unbiased opinion of the workshop.
Before we get started, let me align with your expectations. I'm not going to reveal any specific tools we used; instead, Iwill provide a general overview of the workshop without delving into specific details. The primary reason I will not do sois that I have signed a document agreeing not to share these details with others. Even if I could, I wouldn't, as I believe it is best to learn directly from the source. In case you are interested in my writing, Phil Town has several free pieces of content available, making it easy for you to find a lot of it yourself.
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The workshop started on Friday and ended on Sunday. I had great expectations when I started on Friday. If you have visited this website before, you know that I hold Phil Town and his teachings in high regard. Keep in mind that Phil Town, the teachers, and the coaches are all located in the United States; therefore, the workshop started at 6 pm Central European Time (CET). You will receive an email the day before the workshop. Simply click on the link provided in the email to join the group you have been assigned to. This group will be your team for the entire weekend. The coaches and the students introduce themselves, and at 7 p.m. CET, Phil Town starts the workshop. On Friday, the session was divided into teachings and exercises. You ended up learning about the four M's: Meaning, Moat, Management, and Margin of Safety. This provided you with tools to help determine if the company you are analyzing possesses these Four M's. By the end of the day, you should have identified a company to work with the following day. At 3 am CET, the workshop ends for the day. If you have never worked with the four M's before, I assume you would be very tired.
On Saturday, the session begins at 5 pm CET. You will delve into topics such as the Margin of Safety (a method for evaluating a company and establishing a price), events influencing price drops, as well as investments and counterarguments. Once you have gone through these teachings, you will be able to analyze the company you chose the day before. You will send this analysis to a coach, who will provide feedback later. Once you have handed it over, you will have a Q&A session with Phil Town. Obviously, he had a lot of questions. Even though he never got to mine, it was really educational to hear about his insights on various topics. The last thing you learn about that day is options and how you can trade them, which is a new world to many. The day ends at 3 am CET.
Sunday is the last day and starts at 5 pm CET. However, before it even started, you received feedback on the analysis you did the day before via email. The coach who provides you with feedback is not the one who has coached you all weekend,but rather another coach whom you are not familiar with. I think it is nice because the person doesn't know you and will not be biased. It was really nice to see that the person had taken the time to thoroughly review your analysis and validatethe numbers you had calculated. On Sundays, the topics include options and technical analysis, following the same structure as the other days with teachings and exercises. The workshop concludes with a list of ten companies that Phil Town and his team believe would be good investment opportunities over the next decade, provided that the price is favorable. The companies have been selected from all the companies that the students analyzed over the weekend. Our workshop ran a bit late and ended at 2:30 a.m. CET.
I know this was a very shallow description of the workshop, but it gives you an idea of the topics you will work with and the format of the workshop.
I truly enjoyed the workshop. I might be a bit biased as I already use the four M's in my analyses, having read Phil Town's books before starting investing. Even though I have a good understanding of the four M's, I felt like I learned a lot overthe weekend. I always found it a little difficult to evaluate management because it can be challenging to find information about the CEO or management in general within a company. I feel like I have acquired some great tools and suggestions on how to do so in the future. I now feel more certain about my decisions regarding determining good management from now on. However, what I really enjoyed was acquiring new tools to calculate the margin of safety, which will significantly impact my future endeavors. I have done it correctly before, but I have only calculated it in one way. In reality, there are three ways to calculate it for a company you wish to invest in. All three methods can justify your investment in that company. This means that I will not be as restricted as I have been when investing in a company. It really made me excited, and my analyses will be much more extensive in the future. I believe this will benefit not only me but also anyone who chooses to emulate me.
I really loved the part about options. Options are something I never knew much about, and I always found them a bit complicated. After this workshop, I feel encouraged about my options. Once I gain some experience in trading options with paper money, it is certainly something I feel comfortable doing, thanks to what I learned in the workshop. I also enjoyed the section on technical analysis, even though it was a minor part of the workshop. I was already familiar withtrendlines and Fibonacci retracements before the workshop, but I had never received any formal instruction on them. You also need to be familiar with some tools that can help determine when it is a good idea to exit the market. This is definitely something I will start using from now on.
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I really don't have much negative feedback about the workshop. However, if you are not located in the United States, the time difference can make it challenging. Personally, I am an early riser, and staying up until 3 am at night was a bit challenging for me. However, the teachers and coaches made the whole workshop very engaging, so time flew by.Regarding the list we received in the end of some outstanding companies, I found it interesting, but I already have many of them in my portfolio. Nevertheless, it did open my eyes to some other companies I didn't know much about, and I will surely research them. I'm a bit torn about the list of companies because the whole idea of the workshop is to teach you how to find wonderful companies yourself through analysis. It is stressed throughout the workshop that the companies you choose should have meaning to you as an individual. I believe that some individuals might invest in those companies solely because they are on the list, without conducting their own research. With that being said, it isn't a bad thing to havethe list as you can always use it as inspiration when you research your own companies. I'm just a bit torn about it.
All in all, I think the workshop was great. Not only did I learn new things, but it also really sharpened the tools I already had. I have not the slightest doubt that this workshop will make me a much better investor going forward, and I'm very excited to use what I learned. I also believe that I will recoup the expenses of the workshop very quickly. I would recommend the workshop to anyone who wants to improve their investing skills. If you don't have the funds to attend now, you can learn how to earn extra funds here. If you do not want to dedicate the time, effort, and money to attend the workshop, you can always copy my portfolio.
You can read more about the workshop at Phil Town's website.
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