Brazil Value Talks: Fernando Marx
Multiplied Invested Capital by 13x in 4 Years
Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Brazilian investor Fernando Marx.
From December 2019 to May 2024 his historic performance will be the envy of anyone.
His portfolio returned more than 1200% in the period, versus 30% for Ibovespa.
He multiplied the invested capital by 13x!
This guy knows how to generate real value.
Shall we meet him?
BS: Fernando, could you tell us a little about yourself?
FM: With pleasure, let's go! I graduated from Ibmec and always wanted to go into business process mapping. In college, I was a junior company president. and soon after I joined the business consultancy arm of TOTVS. I worked on projects at Globo, Rede D’Or and Estácio, it was a great experience. My entire intern salary went to NTN-B, I did this during 2014 and 2015 where we had a premium of 8% above inflation. At the end of 2015, very encouraged by my teacher and mentor to this day, Alexandre Espírito Santo, I made my first contribution to the scholarship, R$4,000 - my salary as a consultant at TOTVS at the time. During 2016-2017, I migrated all of NTN-B to the stock exchange, the profit from the operation exceeded 100% and I felt prepared to take more risk in the Market.
Soon after, on Joesley Day, as I was always riding with a lot of leverage, I fell by approximately 70% on the day - that was my first experience of pain. At the time, as my mother was still alive, she lent me money to leave it as collateral and not be liquidated - yes, I held on to everything. Today I see how crazy it was and I was lucky enough to have a flash crash, in a few weeks everything was back and I gave the money back to my mother and paid for dinner lol.
Outside the market, also in mid-2016-2017, I was called by one of TOTVS' clients to undertake a new Family Office with him. I had 5% of the company and would be responsible for managing the operation. Naturally, I became more involved in the financial market until I was invited to work directly for an American bank called StateTrust, where I worked as an advisor and trained a large team of advisors across Brazil - and also had some training abroad.
An important detail, and my wife knows very well, I have always been very responsible and concerned about money. I lost my father at 20, soon after my mother developed cancer and I lost her at 25 (2019), so on this journey, I was always very concerned about the future and financial independence - and I think I will always think that way. I had the immense luck and happiness to have my wife by my side, at this time she was still my girlfriend and her support was a very important foundation for me. When my mother got worse, I had to stop working in person for more than 6 months to take care of her. Naturally, my income dropped significantly and I started dedicating myself much more to the financial market.
Another very lucky thing in my life was to have met TC and fantastic people like Albuquerque and Massa. I think only my boss knows how therapy TC was for me in 2019-2020, even before they invited me to be a contributor. People know the rest of the story, I stay at TC 24/7, in good times and bad.
BS: What is your strategy for making money on the stock market?