The photograph was taken on May 13th at Kytäjä-Usmi.
The economy in Finland is doing fine, after a long hiatus, since the end of 2010. There are quite a lot of companies making initial public offerings in the stock market, and most of them are succeeding. I have taken part in several IPOs, in companies such as DNA (telecommunications), Fondia (law), Tokmanni (retail), Lehto (construction), Remedy (games), and Silmäasema (health).
Most of the IPOs have been quite popular, and the amount of shares allocated to each of the buyers has been rather small. In any case, it has been interesting to study these companies and to speculate how well they will succeed in the IPO. My strategy in the IPOs has been "buy and hold", except that I sold Tokmanni shares the first day the company was listed, which wasn't such a great idea in retrospect.
The appearance of new companies has reminded me of the past, how it was those days when the stock market was really hot. Quite a lot of the investments I made years ago were not so great when the market started to turn. Luckily, I kept the shares, enjoying the dividends, and sometimes bought more shares at a low price, and things turned out fine in the longer term.
During the years I have also owned shares in about a dozen companies which have disappeared from the stock market, many of them having been bought out, such as Novo Group, Hartwall, Janton, Pohjola, Talentum, and PKC.
Currently I hold shares in about 40 companies, of which two are Swedish and the rest are Finnish. Because my background is in ICT and engineering, most of the companies are in these fields, and many are such that I use their products and services, for example car tires and mobile broadband.
The economy seems to be picking up speed, but there are quite a lot of uncertainties. Perhaps it would be sensible to sell some of the investments, but as I said, I'm a "buy and hold" type of investor, and I can wait and see what happens.
(Posting title is from the poem A Terre by Wilfred Owen.)
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