Team
Harry Turner
Harry has 15 years of trading experience and is the founder of The Sovereign Investor. He specialises in stock-picking, backtesting, screening, technical analysis, and portfolio construction.
Having been on “The Street” for the best part of a decade, Harry now runs his own money. Before this, he worked for a boutique hedge fund as a fund manager, where he was part of an investment team managing a global macro fund (equities, currencies, bonds) and two long-only equity funds.
Ross Loehr, CFP®
Ross is a certified financial planner with nearly 20 years of experience in the financial services industry with a focus on relationship building and financial planning.
He has written hundreds of articles for multiple publications with a focus on credit cards, investments, college savings, and travel, and even has a research paper published in the International Journal of Arts and Commerce.
My Story
Welcome, Sovereign Investor! My name is Harry Turner: an amateur investor turned pro with just over 15 years investing experience. The first 5 on my own as a complete novice, and the last 10 split between a hedge fund desk and a personal account as a professional.
Having climbed the learning curve myself, I know first-hand what it takes to succeed and how to avoid the major pitfalls of investing.
Let me tell you, it hasn’t been without its setbacks. I have been where you are, and made mistakes that I cringe at now.
I remember trying to day trade economic data releases with my first trading account. Suffice to say I had no edge in forecasting macroeconomic events, and even when I did predict the right outcome (by luck mostly) markets didn’t necessarily react the way I expected. This trading account didn’t last long.
Who told me to trade this way? The broker, of course. You know, the ones who earn commissions from my trades.
In another trading account I shared with my housemate at university, we were shorting oil-sensitive currencies as the oil price was dropping. This was going well… until we decided to short more oil-sensitive currencies; thinking this was adding “diversification”. Of course all we were doing was doubling down on the same bet. A few days of a counter-trend rally and we were stopped out at a loss.
Having been in the profession for a few years now, I am glad to say I’ve learnt a few things. Not least that investing/trading requires a process and discipline to follow it.
Before, I was trading without any analytical framework or risk management – constantly seeking that one big glory trade.
This is a one-way ticket to an account blow-up.
So how do you develop a process?
What I have come to learn, is that success in this game doesn’t require you to reinvent the wheel. In fact it is the complete opposite.
What has worked for others will work for you.
This was a mini-epiphany for me. If I could learn the approaches of other successful investors, as well as strategies that have worked well in the past, this would provide a great starting point to build my own investment framework.
It reminds me of a quote that Nick Cave made about songwriting, however I think the same analogy can be applied to investing.
Plagiarism is an ugly word for what, in rock and roll, is a natural and necessary — even admirable — tendency, and that is to steal.
Nick Cave
It just so happened that my first job as an analyst was to develop a systematic process for different investment strategies. A process for picking growth stocks, value stocks, quality stocks, as well as a technical system for trading currencies and index futures.
This sent me down a rabbit hole to learn about all the things just mentioned. Firstly, what was a growth stock? What metrics define it? Who are the most successful growth investors of all time, and what were their processes? What growth strategies have performed the best in backtests? What are the most important qualitative considerations for a growth stock? You get the gist.
It was an exercise that taught me how to break down investing into bite-sized components; like puzzle pieces that fit together to form a more holistic picture.
With experience, I have refined my investment approach around these building blocks. Like knowing which strategy to employ in different market conditions. What financial metrics are most relevant for certain stocks. What technical indicators to lean on in trending markets or range-bound markets. And how to marry quantitative and qualitative analysis in stock selection? I know all of this can sound overwhelming (trust me, I’ve been there), but remember, it all starts by asking the simple question: What actually works?!
My Purpose
So why have I set up this website?
Simple.
I get to help you tackle the dynamic world of investing, whilst writing about subjects I’m passionate about.
A win-win!
What’s more, I believe we are entering a period of significant financial repression. A fancy way of saying that inflation is coming to eat away at your wealth.
Therefore, it has never been more important to take control of your wealth and learn how to protect it through smart investing. Inflation is the most regressive tax and I want to help as many people escape its grips. This is my number one goal here.
As such, this website contains a wide-range of educational content, including the investment strategies of world-famous investors, profitable quantitative strategies, fundamental and technical analysis, as well as reviews on the must-have investment tools.
More importantly, it teaches you how to incorporate these concepts into your own investment process and apply them in the real-world through the use of stock screeners, charting platforms, and other analytical tools.
Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what your exact process should be, as this is personality-dependent. You need to work out whether your temperament and skill set are more suited to being a systematic or discretionary investor, a quantitative or qualitative investor, growth or value investor, a chartist, long-term investor, or a day-trader. Or perhaps, like me, you prefer to incorporate elements from several of these investment styles.
What I can hopefully provide though, are the building blocks to help you create an investment process that suits YOU. The same building blocks that help me navigate the investment landscape today.
The end goal? To give you the toolkit to trade with confidence.
To ensure the greatest chance of success for you, I strive to achieve the following goals:
1) Independent Research
It is important to me that my readers trust the integrity and independence of my research. In some cases, I may receive a commission (at no cost to you) if you purchase a product through a link on this website, however this in no way influences my opinion. The vast majority of content on this site contain none of these links, and is purely driven by my desire to educate people.
2) High Quality Reviews
Investing is a business, and should therefore be taken just as seriously as any other business venture. This means that you need to invest in the right tools to ensure your greatest chance of success. That’s why I only recommend best-in-class packages after using them for myself and conducting extensive research on them.
3) Actionable Advice
Firstly, I want to stress that I am not a financial advisor and that none of the content on this website should be deemed as financial advice (see disclaimer). It is purely educational content. With that said, the information is presented in a way so that anyone can follow it should they wish to.
What This Means For YOU?
- Trade with confidence – No longer feel like you’re ‘winging it’
- Invest using the best tools – Learn how to put your investment process into action
- Become a Sovereign Investor – Take control of your own finances