I recently wrote a post, “Why I Sold Premier Exhibitions,” and I received a comment asking whether Premier Exhibitions was my idea. I couldn’t believe this comment because I truly don’t care. What matters to me is that I doubled my money on this investment and those who followed my advice in the January issue of Ultimate Value Finder also doubled their money. Whether the idea came from another investor, blogger, or my grandma does not matter. “Plagiarism” is ok in investing. Actually, it is highly encouraged.

I started writing about investing in 2009. My first blog entry on Classic Value Investors Blog was on June 18, 2009. It was about a company called Arctic Cat. This company is special to me because it was my first public write-up. You can find it here. At the time that I bought it, the stock was trading for approximately $4 per share. Today, it is over $43 per share (I sold at $18 per share). You know who told me about this company? The editor of my book, Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market?. If I had a policy of only investing in companies that I “discovered,” I would have missed an incredible investment opportunity.

Let’s look at another fantastic investment that I totally “plagiarized” – Mitcham Industries. I bought it in 2009 for $5 per share after reading about it on Value Investors Club. Today, it is trading for almost $25 per share and I still hold it because I am convinced that it is going to $50 per share (write-up of this company is included in the sample issue of Ultimate Value Finder). The funny part is that I suspect that the person who “discovered it” made much less money than I did because he sold it much earlier. It is much more exciting to chase new ideas than to sit tight and stick with the old ideas.

Premier Exhibitions is no different. I “plagiarized” it big time. I can’t even remember where I read about it first because it was written about so many times. It was written about six times on SumZero and three times on Value Investors Club. Even Whitney Tilson owned it. However, even though so many value investors knew about it, few of them made money on it. According to GuruFocus, Whitney Tilson was buying it in 2010 and 2011 for between $1.07 and $1.89 per share. Then, he sold right before the payday of prices between $1.47 and $1.90 per share. Another person who wrote about it in the middle of 2011 when the stock price was around $1.80 per share managed to lose money by selling lower even though the stock price went to $3.75 per share.

At the end of the day, it does not matter where you get your investment ideas from. What matters is whether you make money on them. You are an INVESTOR, not an INVENTOR.

As long as it’s his problem, it could be a problem for all of us as well. Let me note that I have never met Paulson, but I certainly admire his skill at navigating the markets in 2008 and before then. Unfortunately, in 2009 and 2010, lots of other investors also admired his skills. His funds ballooned with new capital that he deployed into sizable positions in a number of companies—particularly a handful of gold stocks. This was all great on the upside, now his investors are disappointed with his recent performance, and they want their money back. To give them back capital, he has to sell something. The problem is that he has a number of concentrated positions, if he sells, the prices will collapse and his performance will again suffer which will create more redemption pressure and force him to sell more shares. It’s a vicious cycle that isn’t easily broken once it starts. It only ends when it finally runs its course. It sure is annoying to be a shareholder in anything that he owns while it is ongoing.

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