Short Story: Tawanda Chiyangwa shares his journey on Zimbabwe Stock Exchange

 

By Tawanda Chiyangwa

My investment journey began in 2022 after l had failed to either save or invest in anything the previous, and was now worried about my future and my dreams of becoming a businessman in the future. Growing up, l had always loved the concept of saving and investing money. l had done quite well saving money in my high school days due to seeing my mother's discipline in saving and using that money to buy furniture and other things in the house even though she wasn’t making a lot of money as a fuel attendant. After she died in 2020, l lost my way in the savings department and l would spend most of money on food, alcohol and other unnecessary things the whole of 2021. In December 2021, that's  when l decided to reinvent my life and start saving again because l had remembered my dream and l had to make it a reality.

I always had a love for the stock market and back in college any course on investing and financial securities l would get a distinction. So, I decided to invest a portion of my savings in financial securities. The main goal was to grow that money overtime and sell when there is a new opportunity to either invest in public traded or private companies (more like raising capital through share appreciation). I finally registered on the ZSE direct in January 2022 with ABC stockbrokers because l thought the big guys like old mutual, Imara Edwards and Ingenium wouldn’t want to work with a retail investor.

The first counter l bought was EcoCash holdings because l believed EcoCash holdings as a tech company and everyone knows how tech companies perform in the future even though l had noticed a loss in 2020 in its financial statements. I have always considered myself to be a long term value investor. However, when the market fell in 2022 after the second quarter l had a hard time. I stopped buying shares in August 2022. This is because the prices continued dropping but l kept on saving. However, in November 2022 l read a tweet from Courage Nemaungwe (Zimbabwe’s Warren buffet) who believed that it was the right time to buy because a couple of high value securities had been heavily undervalued. I realized l didn’t know much about this as a business so l decided to do a  little research of my own, that's when l heard Warren buffet's famous interview about buying low when everyone is selling and selling high when everyone is buying the market.

I quickly converted about US$400 of my money at ZWL 800 and 850 rate, l was still afraid because l had never invested more than $50 per month in the market but l knew l had to try ( high risk high reward). I bought EcoCash holdings, Simbisa Brands and Delta shares and they have performed quite well to date with Simbisa being one of my best after listing on the Vfex.

I never really made any mistakes in terms of what companies to buy because of the lessons l got from Warren Buffet about value stocks vs growth stocks and l was already following people like Courage Nemaungwe on twitter and l read Strategies- Stories from retail investors by Albert Nangara which protected me from buying counters like medtech as most the people in the book had lost money from it.

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This year (2023) i am buying a lot of shares , I am doing a monthly investments of US$100 on both the Vfex and ZSE but I am saving on lot of my money for a big buy when the market goes down which usually happens before elections, however if it doesn’t happen I am still going to do it any way

My Advice to new retail investors is that, research and pick the best brokers because lately l have been having challenges with opening a Vfex account . Also research the company you want to buy (its management team, the share holders, its financial statements its very important to help you learn and grow as an investor. Happy investing.

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