Investment thesis
A thesis is the reason you are buying, written down before you buy, in language specific enough to be proved wrong.
"Everyone has AirPods" is not a thesis. "Apple's services revenue is growing faster than its hardware, so the profit margin should keep climbing" is: it says what you expect to happen and it can turn out false.
Writing it before you buy is what makes it useful. Memory rewrites reasons after the fact — every investor who got lucky remembers having predicted it. A sentence saved at the time is the only honest record of what you actually thought.
The best test of a thesis: what would have to happen for you to admit you were wrong? If nothing could, you have a feeling, not a thesis.
In Stoxhatch
Stoxhatch will not let a buy through without one. When you sell, the journal shows the sentence back to you and asks whether it held up.
Related
- Confidence calibration — Calibration is how well your confidence matches your accuracy — being right about 80% of the time when you say you are 80% sure.
- Unrealized P/L — Unrealized P/L is the profit or loss you would make if you sold right now — real on screen, but not banked until you sell.
Try it with $10,000 of simulated cash, no signup needed — or browse the rest of the glossary.