How to Build a Serious NGX Portfolio| @anthonyuzum on Stock Picking, Valuation & Wealth

If you could own 3 Nigerian stocks for the next 10 years, which would be 8B, costodian, Presco and BTC. Disclaimer, TNI podcast is for education only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research. Welcome back to the Nigerian investor podcast. The show here with Rick Dunn and Nigerian capital markets. One break at a time. I'm your host, Moodie. And today with me is my co-host, I.A. Today's episode is going to be very interesting because what I didn't choose something very special, that every investor, eventually has to figure out how to actually build these serious investments for the following. Today's guest approaches investing with a very structured philosophy. He focuses on revenue growth, earnings growth, operating margins and valuation metrics, when analyzing companies. But beyond that, he also runs his portfolio with clear rules, ranking stocks, limiting the number of earnings and concentrating on capital in his highest conviction ideas. Jenny, host to be is Anthony and accountants, property, investor and touchful voice in the university community. Anthony, welcome to the Nigerian investor podcast. Thank you very much, Moodie and I.A. is good to be here and it's always enjoyable to have chats with you guys on X and yeah, I'm happy to be here to share my thoughts on the NGX. All right, so Anthony, let's start from the beginning. Watch, Thesspact, your interest in investing. And I did that, Johnny, it visually led you into the markets. I probably bought my first stock on the NGX or you didn't used to be called the NGX at the time. I think we used to be good in the Nigerian exchange of something like that. But I bought the first stock in 2006. So I completed a uni in 2005 and I was lucky. I told my mom I had this part I'm job, you know, in the UK. I was earning some money. So I told her I told her I had some money. And she said there's some public offers going on at the moment. So I think it was transcorp, donlob and Zenny bank. They all we have public offers almost around the same time. So against Nigeria, I said okay, no problem. I will buy some of their stocks. So I did and I held it the entire time, you know, I never sold. But obviously because of the crash of 2008, I never thought about them again, like probably until more recently when I started buying Nigerian stocks more actively. Then in 2018, I'll say that's probably when I started buying Nigerian stocks a bit more. But I focused more on just GT bank because I was living in Nigeria at the time. And I liked GT bank. So I used to go into the bank. I liked that service. I was like okay, I looked at their financials, looked at their numbers. You know, everything was good. So I was like I'll buy this bank. So I kept buying only GT bank every year for about six years plus. And I still do even now. And last year, I then thought, you know what, things that started to improve on the NGX. Maybe I should move outside of just GT bank and look at other stocks. And that's when I started. I probably bought Zenny bank next after GT bank. So I used the dividends that GT bank paid me last last year. So when I would, we paid the final dividend, I was like, okay, I have this bulk money. I think it was close to a million error. So I was like, okay, let me use this money and buy something else. So that's how I now decided to buy Zenny bank. Yeah, so it's sort of started from there. So I'm a relatively new like NGX proper investor. I'll say probably only in the last one year. Probably what sparked my interest was my cousin. I came to Nigeria last year in February 2025. And that's worked to my cousin who started with a portfolio of 20 million in 2020. I remember because he told me he had a portfolio of 20 million. When I asked him how he was doing in 2025, he said he had 170 million. And then my eyes just lit up like, wow, that was really incredible. So I'm also okay. I'll do is that I'll give you 20 million portfolio to manage for me. And then let me see how you do with it. So I said I was watching what he was doing because he opened a Cardinal Stone account. He was trading on there. So I could see all the stocks he was buying. And he does swing trade. So he would buy hold for three months also and then sell. So I started seeing all the companies and I became interested. So I also started doing some research. So when I got my dividends, that's when I bought Zen in Bank. And so I'll say that my interest for the NGX, particularly in this time, probably started from my cousin and he'm telling me how well he was doing with his portfolio. So yeah. Interesting, interesting. And at what point did you then feel confident in not to start buying individual stocks when you were? I bought, like I said, I bought Zen in Bank first, probably around me after the dividend payments last year. Then it was maybe around June. I started finding lots of different resources. So I started finding lots of resources on YouTube. I watched YouTube a lot. So YouTube probably noticed that I liked Nigeria stock. So it's that I recommend a lot of people to my feed. So I started watching lots of videos about it. So I started to do some research on some companies. It was at that point that started to get interested in some companies. I think our studio and was probably the next one that I really got interested in. I bought a lot of them around that time. The YouTube benefits, I think I like the finance insurance space. So I said it, I kind of started from there. And I wanted that to be a base layer for my portfolio. And then add other stocks later. So I didn't probably add FMCG stocks for a while. So I don't think I added them until maybe months or months after I started investing. So yeah, that's very interesting. I read one of your tweets where you mentioned that the large portion of your portfolio is invested in US index funds. Why did you initially choose index investing rather than picking the dividend stocks? And in the US, over 3,800 companies that are listed on the stock exchange is there. Trying to find the best companies that will perform the best is a very difficult task. In fact, there are so many people that have tried and failed. And even hedge funds like the billion dollar hedge funds that have a million dollar people working for them, they struggle to beat the overall index, the broad index. So I realized maybe around 2018, 2017, buying individual stocks in the US was very difficult. Even though I liked tech and I probably wanted to focus on the tech side of things, I didn't know which side of tech to pick. So what I decided to do was not to think too much about it and just buy only the US funds. I bought US only because I had a choice to buy US or global funds. I chose the US because of the tech focus of the US. So I just thought buy only US funds and stick to that, enjoy the tech returns. And yeah, so that's how I started doing doing that. So they're not that many stocks. On the NGX, they're probably 150 plus stocks or something like that. They're not that many to research. And it's not that hard to then pick the best ones out of 150. But it's very difficult to pick the best ones out of 3,800. Nobody has that sort of time. Even those that can research, they just don't do it well. So another thing is in the US, index funds and ETFs actually track the underlying index. Unlike in Nigeria where you can buy an ETF, but ETF can treat at a different price from its actual NAV, which I found very, very strange. I only found out that probably a few months ago. And I had to tweet and tell people, you know, the ETFs that you see like standard 30 ETF, you know, the value of the ETF and the price. They don't always the same, but that's not the case. Say in the US or in the UK, when you're buying some of these funds either the global or the US funds. So it'd be different. All right. All right. I think this is one of the advantages that the injects currently enjoys one UX marketing that I was still doing. Muffets for we still have this was this brute phase as compared to the US market where they are I can see over 3000 companies. You get them out in the mouth of research. You need to just to pick a really other valued stock, right? But now looking at the managers, stock markets. For someone who's listening to a new chain, they don't have to analyze the company or the injects. The what are the first three numbers that you think you should check? The first three numbers I check are revenue growth. I want to see that the top line is growing because the top line is pretty much your sales is what the customers pay. So I want to make sure that that top line revenue is growing. The next thing I look at is the earnings. So how much of the earnings are growing? So if the earnings are doing well, then I also want to I like to look at that as well. I also look at something a bit different as well. I look at the book value of equity. I look at the growth of book value of equity. I want the book value of equity to grow. But when I notice that the book value of equity is growing faster than the price is growing. That's like a gold mine for me. I wonder, moment I see that I'm like, okay, this is on the value stock. I'm going to go all in and I would buy loads and lots of lots of this stock. And I found out with costudian, for example, I noticed that most people did not notice that the book value of equity grew so much faster than the price had gone up. So when I then realized I looked at the difference. I then bought a lot more cost to the end. I probably didn't buy enough to be honest. So I bought a lot more. And then when people started to realize and the price started to adjust and reread, I then realized, oh, what, I made a mistake. I didn't even buy enough. So I now even bought more again. So yeah, so I like to look at that as probably one of the metrics I focused on. So let's see the book value of equity grew by 100% quarter on quarter December 24 to 25. And then I noticed that the price only went up by say 60%. That's like a green flag. You know, that's for me is, okay, go, go buy the stock because people haven't realized how much the company is growing. And then I obviously go ahead buy the stock and I load up as much as I can if you like. Yeah. So the next question I would like to ask is for some investors, they look at the peer issues alone. When decide where I stock is ship. So how do you determine whether a company is truly on the value of the value? I know you talked about the book value. Is there any other metric that you also look at that tells you if this stock is truly on the value because what I would feel is that looking at it just one ratio alone, when decide where I stock is ship, my probably not be the best way to go at it. So do you look at any other metrics where you are on the value in a stock? I agree. I think looking at just the PE ratio is not ideal. And what you want to do what I do is that I look at the PE ratio does true, but I also look at the peg ratio. So is the price earnings divided by the growth because I typically want the peg to be low. So the peg ratio typically most stocks that have peg ratios on the one on the valued on the NGX is significant amount of stocks have peg ratios on the one. So you know, you now need to kind of find the ones that have really, really low peg ratio. So I find stocks that have peg ratios that are probably below 0.2. And then I look at stocks like so, there were stocks like tip, the initiates, PLC, there were also stocks like costodian, those stocks like beta glass, mutual benefits. Those four, for example, had peg ratios that were so low, even I couldn't believe it. It was kind of like walking on the streets, I find in gold. I was like, wow, it was so cheap. And so that's when I started to buy them. Obviously now people have started to realize how low, how cheap they were and people are not buying them and the stocks, the prices have re-rated, they're not that now expensive. And typically when I find stocks like that, I buy a lot at once. So I don't wait and buy like too gradually. I realize, okay, I'm not going to get this opportunity again. Let me just load up as much as possible. So that's that's sort of been my approach and it so it so far is worked very well. Interesting. Interesting. And metrics are very, very good in analyzing companies, figuring them out. I'm basically going to start using this pay risk because I mostly just look at the groups and project and then do the CA for all the rest. But then again, we also know that the management of a company is what ultimately determines if the group project shows that we're looking at because past not anywhere in the future is only a guy right? It's ultimately down to the management to decide how realistic or how a tangible group of prospects are going to be right. So we are the numbers right for you. How important are qualitative factors like management, quality or industry position where you're evaluating the company? Very important. I really can't tell you that enough. I'll tell you guys a story so you can you get a sense of what I'm talking about. And this is sometimes why I also like to go to Nigeria just to get a feel for what is going on. So I was in Nigeria a few weeks ago. I spoke to you both of you about this and I was just enjoying. So I was an echo you with a friend and we were just having a good time, having beers in the evening. And he worked at a company called CBO with the CEO of the currency of LLX. And during that conversation, I'm not going to tell the details of the conversation we had with my friend, but I can tell you that after that conversation we had on a Saturday on a Monday, I sold every LLX stock I had. Because I heard some qualitative things that was very disturbing. And for me, the moment I noticed any red flags, when it comes to qualitative concerns, and this doesn't necessarily have to be late filings, which can happen sometimes. I don't want to say anything bad about any company. I don't want people to think that I'm trying to discourage them to buy any stocks. But these are things that you have to think about as well. Because you've worked hard for your money and you have to make sure that whoever is stupid in that capital is doing it the best way possible. And if I feel that that person is not doing it, then for me, it's a bit of a red flag. And just to also let you know as well, on part of the reason I actually went into LLX, one of the major shareholders of LLX. I know him personally. And he, you know, I noticed in the last year, maybe a year and a half, he's divested more than 80% of his position. So he held over 300 million shares. And now he's down, he's down a lot because he's been selling it. So again, that doesn't, you know, that for me, it's not a green flag because if he held his shares, I probably would have said, okay, I can see why. And there are some companies that like that. So for example, I know VFD, there is a shareholder that owns a lot of VFD shares. I remember when the rights issue was happening, you know, December last year. And the person was a former employee, so they held a lot of their shares for some reason. They didn't buy any of the rights issue. And they had like a big amount of rights to buy out a discount and he still didn't buy. So I had to ask them why they were like, they kicked dilute enough. You know, I've been buying. So they were like, we're owned the shares for years. And they just constantly dilute our shares. So we just don't want to buy anymore. We're rather buy somewhere else. So again, these little things for me look like red flags. And once they do, I just don't buy that company shares. Even though the company might do well. So VFD, for example, on the surface to everybody looks like a great company. But I just wouldn't add that to my portfolio. Again, it's just my personal preference that I try to avoid companies that have those sort of potential red flags. That's a lot to unpack, you know, because that question that I asked you looking at a company before investing, you look at both the qualitative and the quantitative aspect of that company. Everything has to come into alignment for you to be able to invest into the stock market or into a particular company. So you mentioned that your rights talks you would fool you and then kick out that beast on those rankings, right? So can you walk us through how that ranking system works? Yeah. So I have a ranking system that involves the peg ratio. I also like the cash flow. I like to look at price to cash flow. I know people look at price to earnings, but I actually like to look at the price to cash flow of the business, especially the operating cash flow. I also like to see growth in cash flow from investing activities. So if you look at the cash flow statement, you can actually see how much of their cash is going into investing. So if a company is investing their money, that's actually a good thing because it means that in the future, they will get higher returns. So that by and plan equipment, if insurance company, they're investing in, you know, it could be an oil company, for example, like mutual benefits, buying an oil company or whatever the case may be, but they're investing in some way. I like to look at that too. So I'll say that they're probably about revenue growth earnings growth, the different metrics I look at. Once I've done all of that, then I will rank them based on the ones that appear to have the highest metrics of all of those. I would then look at which one has the best peg ratio I'll rank them. That's the lowest peg ratio that is I'll rank them, which ones have the lowest price to cash flow I will rank them, which ones have the highest the lowest price to book ratio I'll rank them, price to sales I'll rank them. And once I've done that, I will then pick the ones that come up the lowest on average. So on my metrics, so I do it, I do this about once a month, and once I've done that, I then work out which box I want to buy. So for example, for probably, I don't know, four, five, six months straight, it's been tipped every month, and it's not even close. So now, tipped is 20 something percent of my portfolio. So it's got to the cap, and I just can't add anymore. So if I could, I would be buying tipped almost every week. Then cost of the end became big. Cost of that is next on my ranking. So again, I bought lots of cost of the end. Now it's about 10 percent of my portfolio. Again, for one company, I think that's that's probably enough. And that's because cost of that is is an investment company and an insurer, and I have all that insurers to so I don't want to further overall industry. I don't want to go more than 20 percent. The reason why tipped is 20 percent is because it's the only company in that industry in my portfolio. So that's why. So I try to keep the industry and companies to no more than 10 to 20 percent. And I copied there. And once I get to that point, I just stopped buying. Same thing with Aradale, for example, Aradale became 10 percent of my portfolio. I just stopped buying because again, it was a bit too much. You find that because I have this sort of ranking set at the top six stocks roughly of six or seven stocks, make up maybe 70 percent of my portfolio. So I'm just curious like just as a full of questions what you say, how many stocks typically are being portfolio-given where you and kids capital? Yeah, so I actually had a post about this where I mentioned the number of stocks in my portfolio. And in total, I have 20. And I think the number of stocks should depend on the portfolio size. So I kind of said I held 20 stocks. but that's because I want to stay well diversified. But if you have, say, a million, a million, a million, and that's your portfolio, you really should know that you're not holding more than two to three stocks. For those that have large portfolios, I think for you to hold 20 stocks, you have to have like 50 million plus. That's typically what I tell people. So when you get about 50 million plus, then you can hold up to 20. I think anything more than 20, you don't need to over-diversify. You don't have to buy every stock. So there's some stocks you just say, you know what, I'm just not going to hold this. And it's fine. You don't have to hold and hold all of them. So there's some good stocks that I don't own. For example, I don't own NGX group, even though I knew about NGX group, probably in October. And I knew it would do well. But I still didn't buy it because I just didn't want to add it to my portfolio. Same thing with NASCAR, I knew NASCAR would do well. Again, I didn't add it because I felt, okay, I held other stocks like UACN, and I just didn't want to add any other FMCG stocks to my portfolio. So there are many stocks that I knew that, okay, this stock would do well by still didn't add it. MTN, I know most people find it very odd, but I don't buy MTN. I've had many questions about this. Again, I don't have to have every stock. It's a good company, but I just don't want to hold every stock in my portfolio. So I'll say you need to be well diversified. That's true. But if you have a portfolio of 1 million, let's say it drops 50%. You lose 500,000. It's not that hard to go back and work and earn 500,000. Let's say your portfolio is 100 million, and you lose 50% of the portfolio, that's 50 million. I don't care how much I want you to do, it's gonna take you so long to earn that money back. So you need to be relatively well diversified if you have a larger portfolio. When you have, on that 10 million or so, I'll say somewhere around four or five stocks is really more than enough. I see people send me their portfolios to review, and I see that they have saved five million, and then they have 15, 20 stocks. And I have to tell them, you need to sell a lot of these and cod down and concentrate a bit more so that you can concentrate on your best ideas, so that you can actually have returns. There's some stocks I hold. They're not my best ideas, but I hold them for protection. So for example, I hold GT, right? I don't think GT will make me more than 20%, 25% per year, but I hold a lot of it because I need to hold as a protection for my entire portfolio. So that if anything happens, I know GT will stay there and protect me. So that's something that most people also have to think about. - I should add sentiment of sometimes having some defensive talks. I even call them reserves. Actually last year, I said, "Well, I was a very good example for me." There was very cheap, right? I expected it to make good returns, but it didn't really move very much. And looking at it, I was grateful because it was like, "Okay, now I need capital to invest in some new opportunities I was looking at." And seplath, it could not be beats, well, not by much. Now, it was just take that little bit of money from seplath and just use to take those opportunities. And then I can come back to seplath later on. - So completely I do it as a sentiment. - Okay. The question I want to ask is that when you add new capital to your portfolio, do you usually buy new stocks or you add more to your IS conviction audience? - Yes, a good question. Every time I have new capital, I add more to my highest conviction holdings. So I don't try to, sometimes my highest conviction holdings I've got to my cap. So I then stop. So for example, Costodian has got to a cap of 10%. I decided to stop at that point. Aradel got to 10%. Now, Aradel is because of how well it's done. Aradel is now 15% of my portfolio. I don't, ideally, I don't want that. Ideally, I want it to be less, but I'm not gonna trim, I just leave it to do it is, and just continue investing. Then there are some stocks where, so once I've gone through the ranks, I then move on to which one's next. So beta glass, for example, was next on the list. So I've been buying, so we knew capital over the last two, three weeks. I've been buying a lot of beta glass, and I just, I basically just keep buying. I got to about 5% again of my portfolio, and I thought, okay, 5% for this one company is probably enough. And not only because it's a liquid, if beta glass was, it basically actually do a bonus, for example, I would probably make it 10% of my portfolio, because if it wasn't a liquid, I would make it, I would make it 10%. Because I need also to be able to liquidate it if I want to, because at some point it's a large position, and you want to be able to say, all right, sell, and I can get the money if I want to. So I think that's, again, my issue with it. So there are some limits I put based on the type of stock, based on how well it's performed, and things like that. So for that, I've kept it at 5%. Then of course, after that, after beta glass, I move onto the next stock, and the next stock, and next stock, and so on. So for example, when I sold off LLX, I had to add another stock to my portfolio. So recently I added Magnicles, which is a penny stock. So again, the bulk of my portfolio is in the large caps, but I do also have quite a bit of penny stocks, probably seven or eight of them. And again, I buy them because I think if they do very well, then they improve the value of my portfolio. If they don't do well, so if the entire value of Magnicles goes to zero, it's not even going to hurt my portfolios. It's, it's not 1%. Okay, so now let's move on to the NGS itself, because you've recently pointed out that the NGS delivered very strong returns over the past year. So do you believe the Nigerian stock market can continue delivering strong returns over the long term? Yeah, so I think I've posted about this several times that I still feel the NGS is significantly on the valued. You know, normally a metric like a peg ratio is one of the read, one of the metrics I use. Now, it's very rare to find so many good companies to have peg ratios below one. It is just unusual. If, and normally if you go into the US market, for example, you will find peg ratios that are below one, but you don't find the like the very best companies having peg ratios below one. It's very, very unusual. But in Nigeria, they're all over the place. So I think that the rating of the valuation of stocks in Nigeria hasn't even started. So I still feel that this has a four year window to completely relate, re-rate to get back to exactly where it should be. So I'm not talking about overvalued. I'm just talking about normal valuations. Just get back to something that we would consider normal. The Nigerian stock market is effectively being valued as if Nigeria has only an eight year life. That's pretty much what they're doing. As if Nigeria would only be in existence for eight years. Because when you have an average peg ratio of eight to nine times for all the stocks, that's what everyone is saying. They're effectively saying we don't trust your currency, we don't trust your government, we don't trust anything about your economy. Because we don't think you would survive more than the next eight years. I personally think that is false. I think that the peg ratio for the average Nigerian market should be somewhere around, I'd say, in the teens. So say around 15 times, 16 times. That's double where we are now. Not to add the revenue growth earnings growth or good experience over the next four to five years. If you add the earnings growth and add the double re-rate and of the price earnings ratio of the average stocks, we could be looking at a 40% annual return for the next four years, four to five years. So obviously, how that return will come up, I don't know. So last year we had 50%. This year might be 50% again. Next year might be 20. The next year after the 1970, it's not always going to be even. But I think if you average it out for the decade of the 2020s. And if you go back to 2020, you'd see why I mean, you'd see that. The returns have been very, very good. Because most people have started to realize that the market is significantly on the value. Interesting. How do they agree? I even with the due sense, bullish on that as large amounts of what be rich, I think a lot of people are talking about where the market has been bullish for a while. It's likely going to turn around. Yes, the market is cyclical. Yes, people will take profits. That would be it. I wouldn't say the market is overvalued and therefore it's correcting itself. But the market is more overvalued. The market is still undervalued. It's just profit because we take profit from time to time. And we're just in that period of profit thinking right now. Potentially maybe the global due to political prices between Ireland and Egypt might be a part of people actually market is just with this right now. Because people are taking profits. Then looking at the whole NGH, right? Are there any sectors that are interesting to you or sectors that you look at and say, well, this sector has interesting good prospects and I think I would like to, I would like to have a good no more of this from me is my from this sector in California. The insurance space for sure. In Nigeria, the insurance penetration is low. Most people aren't aware that they can get insurance for lots of things. So you can ensure your home, you can ensure. So for example, my dad has a business clearing out for business. And in that business, one of the difficulty is actually protecting the goods from when it leaves the port to the client's location. So they have something called goods in transit insurance. Without that insurance, you can imagine theft happens all the time. So you transport the goods on the road, the driver packs the truck, and there's stills half the goods, you know, things like that. You need goods in transit insurance. Otherwise, agent is liable. And I know this because it has happened to the company, my dad's company, many several times actually, where they hire a transport company. And this transport company takes the goods and then halfway through, they still have the goods. So you then have to clean, you have to go to the insurance company to clean. Obviously, the insurance company then deals with the transport and all that and tries to, you know, get that money back from there. but they pay you back for the goods. And I'm not talking, you know, one, two million. I'm talking sometimes 100 million. So it could be a lot of money, but most people aren't aware that those type of insurance actually do exist and lots of companies use them. So I think the insurance penetration hasn't even started yet. Most people don't even have any type of insurance. And going forward as people start to become wealthy and people will become wealthy in Nigeria over time. As that happens, people will then realize, oh, I have this land or I have this property or I have this thing, I need to ensure it. So I think the insurance space has not been fully, and of course, as I'm fully adjusted, if you like, and most people will realize that over time. And if you consider the fact that they're now recartalizing, that gives them a lot more funds to go out there and really capture a bigger part of the market and convince people to get into insurance. So I think insurance space is probably where I'm putting, that maybe a big bit that things would do well in that space. I don't think people are really, people haven't adjusted to the fact that this could be a reality. And there are obviously some in other spaces, like industrial space, which I'm very feel good about, like beta glass, I feel good about them, I feel good about the cement companies. I tend to tell people, I don't really care which cement company you like just by one of them. So I feel good about the cement companies as well. Because again, building and construction, we don't have enough homes in Nigeria. So we don't have enough roads. Think about all the roads that have to be built. Think about every corner road. So for example, you find that it may be a major road is tart, but all the inside roads are not. Those inside roads will eventually have to have some kind of block paving and things like that, they'll need cement. So if you think about all of the construction that has to go on, you really should, if it was for me, that's in that the cement company and industry would do well. So those two industries, the industrial and insurance space, I like a lot. - Thank you for that. Just to add to that, because apart from the insurance space, you talked about the penetration that is very limited. You also know that last year there was this new build that was passing to low, the insurance fee. So I think with that too, it's gonna also help with the penetration. Because I think there's some part of that bid that mandate whom one has to ensure their buildings and some other compulsory insurance that you have to do more markets for the insurance companies. So now moving forward, what are some mistakes you often see Nigerian retail investors making when they pick stocks? - I would say probably the biggest one is over diversifying. So buy in everything. So you shouldn't ideally buy all the stocks. You should buy your highest conviction stocks and just buy a lot of them. So if you like Dango to cement, for example, buy tens of thousands of it, don't buy 500 shares and say, oh yeah, I still need to buy Boa as cement as well. I also need to buy a WAPCO. I need to know, just once you find one, just stick to that one and just buy a lot of that particular stock. And I'll have to give some credit to your guests that was on this show a few weeks ago, I think, coach Amitai. I started watching him on YouTube sometime last year and he was probably one of the people that also gave me that same idea of going quite large on your highest conviction. So when you realize you like a stock, just buy a lot of it. Trying to say, oh yeah, Boa enough now. Like I said before, I wish I had bought more costodian. Even though it's a good part of my portfolio, I definitely wish I had bought more because I was convinced it was a very good company. I probably thought it would take longer for people to realize, but it took, it was quicker than I thought. So I bought a lot of it last June and I bought a lot more in December. January February must be decided to realize the price started to become more expensive. I bought more again, but after a while I had to stop because I became too expensive. Yeah, I think when you have your highest conviction place, buy a lot more of them rather than spreading out across. And I'll say that that's probably the biggest mistake. It's the allocation of capital. I remember someone sent me that portfolio at the end of February, right? Or almost every NGX investor was celebrating. We're like, oh wow, our portfolio is doing well. Most people were tweeting, they're up 20, 25, 30, 40%, 40% so people are 60%. And then a guy sent me his portfolio. He was like, what's going on in my portfolio? So and I'm not talking, and his portfolio is a hundred million plus. And he had a hundred million plus and he was flat. And he was like, what's going on? And then I found out he had 40% allocated to Oando. Oando effectively pulled down his entire portfolio returns. So yes, I know. So that's what happens sometimes. If you don't allocate properly, then it's possible that you can pull down your entire return. So he was so unhappy. And I told him, you can't sell Oando because you're in a massive loss. Like you can't sell it now. You have to hold on. Luckily, obviously, we had an oil rally and Oando has improved. But he bought Oando at 17. And it's still not there. It's still not broken even. So I actually told him, you know what? Sell 20% of the Oando and then put it in the stock that would do well. If you had done that, would I made more money? But he was so like, no, I don't want to do that because he felt that he don't, he don't want to take any loss on his position. And sometimes it happens like that if you don't allocate to the best companies. So if you concentrate, but you concentrate in the wrong play, then it will end up hurting your returns. So in effect, concentration is good, but you have to make sure you're concentrating in the moderately safe investments. So if it was me, I would concentrate in the large cap companies. That's what I do. I tend to look at, I think initially when I started, I only looked at the trillion-nirah companies. I didn't even bother looking at anything else. Then later I started to look at 100 billion-nirah plus and I concentrate on them and only on them only. OK, that's interesting. So far, we've talked about the valuation, the imaginas talk market being on the valid. And with your projection, we did the industry as the market should still return some good percentage of positive returns. But I want us to focus this interview on currency risk and global investing. Because I know there was a time you talked about land in Nigeria appreciating significantly in narratives, but they barely grew when you measured them in pounds or in dollars. So using that as an example, do you think that many Nigerian investors don't estimate the impact of currency deposition on their long-term wealth? Yeah, I think many Nigerians are aware of how much wealth can be destroyed by currency. I know many Nigerians that have encouraged who live in the UK have encouraged to buy Nigerian shares and they're so scared by all the pain of the fall of the past. And they can't get over the pain of the Niro loss. So I tell them what you do is allocate 20% of your portfolio of your assets or 20% of your savings. So if you live in America and you're saving $1,000 a month and you can afford to do that, then just put $200 of that. If you live in the UK, if you're saving $1,000 a month, 800 pounds can go to your normal global or US investments and then just put 200 pounds in the NGX. But even that, most people don't want to do, you know, they're so reluctant, then the fear is mostly about the currency. So I think most investors are aware of the pain of the currency loss. So the tweet I was talking about was when I said I bought a land for $10 million in 2015, today it's worth $16 million and that's true story, by the way. But if I just put that money in the S&P 500, it'd be valued at $250 million in Niro terms. And someone also then tweeted to me, which was very painful, said if you had bought a Presco with a $10 million, it'd be $700 million. So even more painful to me, but the currency loss is definitely something that I think most investors are aware of. But the currency depreciation, this is what I've also tweeted back as well. The currency depreciation we've seen in the past was mostly as a result of the free markets not being allowed to determine the. So in effect, there was a sort of manipulation of the currency, which happened every year. So every year, you have to kind of know someone to buy currency at the right rate. And there were people that were making money just on that alone. Now that everything is, you have the official rate and all the rates pretty much aligned. If there is a depreciation of the currency, it'll happen quickly. The government doesn't have to adjust for it. So take the petrol prices going up in Nigeria, which is very unfortunate. As soon as I saw oil prices going up, I was in Nigeria last week and I had to tell people that I knew by a lot of petrol, because petrol prices are going to go up. So this is not like before, where you know your paying $150,000 per litre and it doesn't change. You know, regardless, the government would always take the hits for it. Now that's not the case. The moment oil prices globally go, you will get hits immediately. Any changes in effects reserves in, you know, you'd find that it impacts our currency. So you'd see that all those things, the market mechanism is making things a little bit more efficient. So I don't see the NIRRA devaluation. So let's not even call it depreciation because the NIRRA will still depreciate. But like the immense devaluation, which we've seen in the past, which is happening at least from my adult life I've seen it happen three times. So. I don't think that that sort of massive devalulation will happen again in that way. It would depreciate, but depreciate gradually over time. So in such a way that is unnoticeable. So you're not going to notice it. It would just happen gradually. So I think most investors should not be too worried about the NIRR, NIRR, at depreciation anymore. And to be honest, I actually think that the current exchange rate has baked in nearly a decade of depreciation already. If you are investing now, you're actually going to get an appreciation likely a good appreciation or a steady flow of the NIRR compared to your foreign current exchange for a while. So I bought GT shares in 2024. I remember when I was changing the money to buy the shares. It was 2,250 NIRRR per pound. So I bought, I changed it. So think about it today. The same is now 1,900. So I've gained on the currency. GT has more than doubled. And GT has paid me so much dividends. If I look at my returns in pounds, it's massive and it's not even close. So I don't think that I would continue. I think the currency would fairly remain fairly stable. As long as we continue this current exchange rate mechanism, which is free and free markets where the market determines the price of it. The only, the major risk to be honest that I am concerned about is political risk. So I just don't know who the leader is going to be. If the leader changes policy, if they decide to go back to the old exchange rate mechanism that we had before, where it's fixed, if we now have a situation where subsidy is back, you know, in some kind of backhanded way, you know, where yes, don't worry, we'll pay some company and then they'll kind of help to subsidize the petri price. If those sort of mechanisms come back, I will be very concerned. And in fact, to be honest, if we go back to the old system of no more free markets, I will probably liquidate my entire and NGX portfolio. Interesting insights. I don't think I agree with your assessment on the exchange rate, right? But for some of you also start investing in value, but doesn't know where to begin. What's the simplest rest table that they can take to expose themselves to the global market? For those living in Nigeria, what I would say is you don't need to invest in a global market until your portfolio is about 20 million plus. Because on that 20 million, the fees you pay for buying global stocks and global funds is quite high. So let's say you want to buy Apple stock. I know, I think some of you are tweeted about this. I don't know about the fees, but I've just heard that the fees are ridiculous. Sometimes the fees are more than the actual value of the stock you bought. So there is no real value for me buying, but diversifying outside of Nigeria on that 20 million. When you get to 20 million plus, then you can start to buy foreign investments. To be honest, if it wasn't me, I wouldn't even bother going to bamboo to buy a foreign stock or anything like that. I would just diversify by putting some money in like a dollar, dollar, a debt fund. Like GT bank has one, you just go there, you start by just putting, say, $1,000, it pays something like 4% or something like that every year on your dollar. So you do that, and then you diversify that way. So and then you do it gradually. You don't do it all at once. So if I was in Nigeria, that's where I would start. And then over time, you can then start to go into SAP 500. You get to set it up or fully level. Then you move on where you need to go to SAP 500 and things like that. But initially, I think every investor in Nigeria should just focus mainly on the Nigerian stock market. The Nigerian stock market would do well beyond your emergency fund that you need with your young, especially, I think you should have some money in the money markets as well. So if you're young, have maybe your emergency fund in the money markets. But if you're still working, I don't think you have, you need more than your emergency fund in the money markets. So you keep it in Nigerian money markets. You have the remaining in stocks. You reach a certain portfolio size, then you start to diversify globally. You start to add debt, dollar, dollar to nominated debt funds. Then maybe the SAP 500 and things like that. But again, even then, if I lived in Nigeria, I wouldn't make the foreign part of my portfolio more than, I would say 30%, maybe 40% at the most. But if you live outside of Nigeria, then you have to make it a bigger part of a portfolio because you don't live in Nigeria. So does that live in the UK and the US? So I live in the UK. So a good portion of my portfolio is even now is still here. So both in property here and also in US stocks. So it's only a small portion of my portfolio which I so I think I told someone that the entire NGX portfolio is a satellite portfolio for me. Even though I enjoy it more and I tweet more about it and I say more about it. But I know that I definitely have a bulk of my assets still here because I don't live in Nigeria. But if I did live in Nigeria, I think most of my assets will be on the end. Yeah, yeah. I agree with you 100% because I was to tell about this to that, if you live in Nigeria, you don't really end that much. You have no business with the US market. And some people, you know, of course, is a motion of it. They felt like actually be saying that. And I think I also tweeted again recently that if you want to invest in the US market rather than a good individual stock, just focus on the S or P500. Automate it and forget about it. Yeah, I really think this is why I said that the edge phones, the index phones that you see at perform those individual investors that are recourse to shoe. So there's evidence because even myself to sinali have different kinds of investments for myself and my family. My kids, they have a World Co 5 tonight. We invest a portion of money every month for their education. So those are indexed those phones are indexed. The other tax reducing investment that you can do yet to, that's what we call rotary. We were allowed to invest like for last year, $7000 US dollars. That's a limited kind of invest in that account. But your returns, your precision and your capital, everything starts free when it's time for you to take out the money. So those accounts are automated then. Then I also have my individual US stock where I picked up and from my own observation, my wife's account that is automated, my sons accounts that are automated, my rotary account that is automated, my retirement service account that is automated. And the 529 education phones account of my kids that are automated. They have done way more than my individual stock picks. The aims is doing very well. You buy that Amazon is this. That portfolio is really suffering right now. But those index portfolios, they are doing very well. So from personal experience and from what I've also read and from what other people's experience that made me to tweet that focus on the SAP 500. That is a phone that has for the past 50 years that has returned on average 10% every year. How many people beat that? Very few people. So what you just said, I agree, what represents if you live in Nigeria and you have less than 20 million, you have no business investing in the US market. You are just a rich, bamboo or wherever you buy your stock from. That's what is going on. You are rich. And they were courage to do that because they are making money from it. So why you just watch information on social media? So people might feel like you are attacking some businesses. No, it's just your own personal interest. I'm trying to protect your interests. But of course, the final decision is left for you to decide what to do. Now, this will take me to the next question because I also noticed that you talked about the first 100 million era or the first 100,000 era investment is the address milestone. So why do you think that is? The reason why that 100 million era is such a defining metric and $100,000 or 100,000 pounds, if you live in the UK is because after that point, sometimes if you have a good year, let's say the S&P 500, I think in one of the years, I think 2024 did like 20% or something like that, 20% plus. Let's imagine you have 100,000 pounds in the S&P 500 and it did 20% that made you 20,000 pounds plus in that one year. And most people their jobs, the average salary is like 38,000. So the moment you get to the point where your one year return is so significant, is almost close to like a four-year salary for most people. That's typically when you know that your investment is starting to get some traction. And it's the same in Nigeria that imagine those are made 50% right last year. If you invested in an average equity mutual fund, you didn't even have to go anything special, you didn't have to pick any stocks. If you just bought an equity mutual fund and you had 100 million last year, you made 50 million. Most people the hard-doubt portfolio that made 50 million may not even have or earn 50 million in a year. So that's where I think it starts to make a bit of a difference, where you get to 100 million. The returns become so significant, it almost matches your salary. So like for me, that's that's actually where I've got to point now where my asset returns most times is more than my earnings. Way, way more. So if I look at how much I make on all my assets, so both property, stocks, everything, on a very good year, I don't earn as much. And that is not just me, that's me and my wife combined. I'm a high-enter. So I actually paid a higher tax rates in the UK. So even then, and my wife also pays a higher tax rate, but sometimes if. a good year, the assets were outperform. So that's what happens when you reach a set-in portfolio level. You then realize that your portfolio is actually earning way more than than you can. So I think 100 million is the right threshold in Nigeria? For a broad $3,000 or $100,000 euros or pounds is probably about that same sort of threshold, where the investment starts to make almost as much money as you put in. So the only thing is to get to that 100 million or 100,000 pounds in the first place, it takes a long time. So if you're put in say 500 a month, it's good to take you years before you get to that 100,000 pounds. If you get a thousand pounds a month, it would still take you many years to get to 100,000 pounds or a hundred thousand dollars or even a hundred million. So that's the only thing to think about. So that's why when people tell me, as I remember when I pushed that about it and someone said, "Oh, you have this portfolio now, you're a big man." And I was like, "Yes, but you are young." So I had to tell them, "I'm 41 years old, but you have 15 years of compound." Yeah, you have time, exactly. So when you are knowledgeable and you have time, it will eventually get to that point. So it happens with time. And if people are patient, eventually you will get to that point. Completely agree with everything you said. I've often interpreted things like this in my head. Once you hit the center level, I wouldn't be using the 100 million. I've been very ambitious. I've been using the billiard in my head. And I'm like, "What you hit the billiard? Even a 5% tonne is more than a salary." So there are some amounts that just hit the house. You just hit the house. Just know that you hit a mouse tool, that's it. Just places you in the bracket of wealth that most people just, it's just on a margining. So I can really agree with you. But now thinking about it, from the 100 million perspective, it's actually very, very, very, very, beautiful. And it's the same. It's more like a list of the 100 million that needs to be new. Yeah, and I hope for a lot of young people who start that paying attention, it's very, very cheap. It's just the next time. And like you mentioned, some 1 of 20 years or some 1 of, 25, some of 30, you have enough time to start building that house. I completely agree. But now, for someone that wants to build that house, for someone who is in this business, we are also building 100 million up and fully. What are these? Do you think that it should start the building now? Yeah, so I think I've also tweeted about this, that the main thing you need to do is to convert your earnings into capital. So no matter how much you earn, it's so hard to earn so much more money every year. So let's imagine that you are being, you are, you know, for some reason, you are a high flyer in Nigeria. You earn, you know, 7 million a month as an example. Now, you take the 7 million a month, that's about 84 million a year. Now, for Nigeria, that's actually quite decent. And if you spend it all next year, if you try to earn more than 84 million, it can be quite difficult to earn say 10, 20% more than it's 4 million. But if you invest, let's say half that capital, if you invest at half of the 84 million, say you put 42 million in an investment. And that investment can make 30, 40, 50% in a year more than your earnings growth. So capital tends to a lot of the time, most people don't realize this capital makes more money than income. When I started my income, if I look at my income from when I started my career, which is 20 was I think my career started just under 20 years ago, about 19 years ago. If I calculate my income growth from 2007 to 2026, it averages around 3% a year roughly. That's been my income growth in the entire time. Now, most people will say that's not bad. You've actually done okay, living abroad and things like that. That's true. But if I look at the capital growth of my so the amount of capital and wealth I've grown is a lot more significant because assets grow more every year than your income. Your income doesn't grow that much. So you have to focus on trying to put as much as possible in investments. So I tend to recommend that most people invest at least 25% of their income in investments. Now in Nigeria, if your income is not very high, that's going to be hard at first. So that's going to be very difficult. If your income is very low, then maybe start at 10%, but have it in your mind that you have to get to 25%. When you get to a certain world level, really it should be 50% plus. So when you get to a certain income level, so for that person earning say 84 million, for example, in Nigeria, that person really should be saving half their money, at least 40, at least 40 something million of that 84 million should be saved and invested in some kind of investments, whether stocks or property or whatever the case may, wherever investment you like, I prefer this stock market, but that's what I would suggest that most people do. So it's the proportion of your capital of your income that you can save that then converts to capital. That capital then earns you way more money than you can earn from your job. So that's what I would suggest that most people do save at least 25% of your income as a rule. And then when you get to a certain income level, when your income starts to get to it out, you know, abroad, I tend to say about when you get to a hundred ways to start earning six figures, so a hundred thousand dollars plus, then you really should be saving around 40, 50% of your income. Because once you get to that point, once you do that for five, six, seven, eight years, you'll find that you achieve a level of comfort that you can even reduce the amount of savings you do later if you want to. So for example, I used to save more than 50, 60, some years, 70% of my income. So between 50 and 70% for many years. And then but now it's in the low fees, but that's because now I can afford to save less because I don't have to invest as much anymore. Because like I said, my assets then return a good part of my good return to me every year already. So that's why I would definitely suggest for most people to start with at least 25%. Obviously, if you can't get to 25% because your income is so small, start with 10. And then work your way up as you start to earn more income. Interesting. Interesting. So now I think it's not time for us to ask you some quick fire question. What do you give us maybe one line or you can just let it briefly and give us a quick response. So if you could own three Nigerian stocks for the next 10 years, which would they be? It'd be costodian, Presco and beta glass. Interesting. Presco seems to make everyone's list for the software and they're still low ten. So stocks are really good in Niger, which one wins low ten? In Nigeria, hands down stocks and it's not even close. The real estate is a wealth preservation tool. I don't look at real estate as a tool to make money. But most people get it wrong. They think they can get wealthy with property. Actually, no, you get wealthy first and then you buy property to protect the wealth that you have generated. If when you have a lot of stocks, then you can buy property. So you remember my cousin, I spoke about that has started from 20, go to 170 million. When you go to a certain size, he just bought his house outright. He didn't have a house for a very long time. But now he did and he just he told the landlord he wanted to buy his existing house and just bought it off the landlord and he just paid cash. So you get to a point where you're wealthy from stocks that you can actually buy the property you want. But I think it's better to focus on the wealth growth through stocks. And then when you now want to protect, you can now buy property. But it's not going to get you the same returns as stocks. It's just not going to do it. Most places don't do it, even in the US and in the UK. There's no part in the world where stocks added stocks and where property outperform stocks. The only way property outperforms are brought is because borrowing is cheap. So when you can borrow and you can leverage, then you make a higher return. But if you want on leverage returns, you can actually ask any of the AI platforms. They'll tell you, if you say on leverage returns, property or stocks and it's not even close and in any part of the world stocks will always do better. Thank you for that. So what is one investing mistake that taught you the biggest lesson? I would say that the biggest mistake I made was investing in one of those lending scams. I thought it was the genuine lending business, but it ended up being more less a scam. So people should not invest in those sort of things. You should invest in things that you have control of. That's one. So when you're investing stocks, it's in your name. No one can take it away from you. Every dividend that's paid is paid into your account. I'm seeing them with property as well. If you buy one of those, it's in your name. If you come by in the right place or right, you know, with the right documentation and things like that, I would definitely say investing in one of those was a huge, huge mistake. Unfortunately, I did it with a large portion of my portfolio in 2015. And I lost at a start almost all over again. So yeah, so I would definitely suggest that nobody put their money in that. And even if you want to, the right portfolio allocation is always everything. If you, if I had put only 10% of my portfolio at a time of the money I had at a time, it would not hurt as much. It was because I put a bigger portion, probably 70 plus percent in it. And I thought always easy money, the pay me 10% a month and it turned out to be a disaster. So yeah, definitely definitely want everybody away from that. Yeah, thanks for that. I think before made one mistake, what do you draw in our pursuit of understanding investing and it's just a big takeaway for a long time. And this is a special remuneration. To not be discouraged by making mistakes, just learn from it, right? So what's more, believe me, by investing that you've probably changed over time. Individual stocks. So in the past, I'll say that I was index funds, US index funds only. And in fact, I did that for many years. And because of that, the index fund to part of my portfolio is quite large compared to because I still obviously buy every month. But sometimes last year, I started buying some US individual stocks and obviously I buy individual stocks in Nigeria as well. Although when based on my portfolio in Nigeria, because it's a basket of 20 stocks, it's not really like an individual stock portfolio. It's like an index fund too. But I now have a plan to put roughly 10% of my assets in individual stocks. So stocks that I believe in, I would just buy a lot of them. So I think you mentioned him that has a mood earlier. So I bought a lot of them. I bought a lot of their shares. And obviously it performed very badly. I made a huge mistake and I went big in December because I thought that was the low. I thought it can't go any lower than this. And then it still went 50% below where I bought it in December. So I had to just sit there. I'd take it, you know. But it's coming back now. And I think investing at least 10, around 10, 20% in individual stocks is not a bad idea. Most people can't make money by an individual stocks. So it's always a good idea to just have a bulk of your assets or your portfolio, especially abroad in index funds in Nigeria. You have no choice. You have to buy individual stocks because there are any like index funds that we may have them. Although you can always buy an equity fund if you want to start. So let's say you want to start investing and you just don't want to be bothered looking at individual stocks. So my sister was asking about where to invest her money. I had to tell her just buy an equity fund. You know, so she opened the Z-Crest account and she started buying equity funds there. And that's fine. You don't have to think about it. The fund makes you to return and you make money that way. And you can always liquidate as well as fairly liquid. So again, I think some people, if you don't have the time, you're very busy by equity mutual funds. If you have the time, then you can buy individual stocks. I wouldn't recommend ETFs because they can be a liquid. But equity mutual funds are a good way. They're basically like the equivalent of what we have here as US index funds. So I'll say buy an equity mutual fund. If your service in my sister's an MD, she doesn't have the time. I have the time on freelance and a contractor. So I have the time to like research on the stocks, find the right ones and buy the right ones. But not everyone is like that. Thank you so much, Anthony. This has been a really insightful conversation. Thank you for taking your time to join us today for sharing your perspective with our listeners. I really appreciate you for coming. And for everyone that is listening, if you find value in this conversation, please make sure you follow Anthony on Twitter. It shares a lot of insightful information about investing, not just in Nigeria, in the US, not just stocks, properties. So I believe you will really benefit from following him on Twitter because he has a very helpful handle. So follow us, read and share this podcast with someone who is interested in learning more about investing in the Nigerian capital market and even in the US market as well. And if you enjoy this episode, don't forget to subscribe to the Nigerian Investor podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts from. Until next time, stick consistent, stay invested and stay curious. Bye for now. Thank you Anthony. Thank you very much, Shire, for Shire and Moody. Have a good day.