Wilbert Wynnberg – The Value of a Hedge Fund When an Oil Investment Goes Wrong
My Worst Investment Ever Podcast - A podcast by Andrew Stotz - Tuesdays
Wilbert Wynnberg is an international speaker, award-winning author, and founder of the Think Act Prosper (TAP) Growth Conference. Since 2015, Wilbert has touched the lives of over 100,000 people in more than 20 countries through his seminars, live programs, and award-winning book, THINK. ACT. PROSPER.: How Small Habits Can Lead to Massive Success. “If you want to stay in the investment game for the long term, sometimes you just have to take a short break so that you can enjoy the game.” Wilbert Wynnberg Worst investment ever Wilbert’s worst investment ever happened just a few weeks ago. As a prolific investor, Wilbert has been following the business cycles since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted. He’s been tracking a lot of different indicators, data, and the underlying numbers. He felt that in 2018, a lot of things had kind of picked up, but there wasn’t any reason for him to go in and take any action, whether it be long or short. So he kept watching the market. Ignoring Coronavirus At the start of the year, when Coronavirus started hitting the news, Wilbert at first wasn’t paying much attention to it. He thought it was the US probably overplaying the whole situation. Wilbert decided not to do anything about it unless he had further confirmation. Getting ready to beat the market By February, it was almost inevitable that the market was going to be shaken up. Wilbert could foresee a bear market. And so he started raising money so that he could pounce on the market. As he was raising money, Wilbert was also tracking things like insider trading, whether CEOs were buying or selling companies, what hedge funds were doing, and more. At that point, his research showed him that it was not the right time to buy equities and go into the stock market. So Wilbert waited it out. Taking the market head-on Eventually, Wilbert found out that with this virus and a high unemployment rate, governments will have to start printing money. So he began to look at commodities. Oil prices started coming down as well. Now Wilbert was very confident it was time to invest. At this point, he had raised a decent few million dollars. Oil stocks seemed like a good option, or was it? Brent oil was at about $25, and the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was at about $22. This was a two-decade low. However, everybody believed that oil, unlike Bitcoin, would never go to zero because people need it for everyday stuff. So, Wilbert and his investment team were quite confident and stoked. They thought that this was going to be the trade of the lifetime. So without much further ado, Wilbert entered the position and started buying oil stocks. Falling flat on their faces At some point, Wilbert received an alert saying that Saudi Arabia and Russia were...