Costly Lessons from Selling ANTM Shares to Buy BBRI
On a certain point in 2024, I made a decision that felt very logical at the time. I sold my shares in ANTM, or Aneka Tambang, and used the proceeds to buy BBRI. For those who do not know, Aneka Tambang is a state-owned mining company. Its share price fluctuates in line with global commodity prices—gold, nickel, and other metals. It all depends on the whims of the global market, which I cannot control or even predict with any accuracy. That was what made me uncomfortable. It was not that the company was bad, but too many factors determining ANTM’s fate were far beyond my reach.
My reason for buying BBRI was simple and, I thought at the time, very solid. BBRI is not just any bank. It is a bank with branches reaching remote villages, a bank whose market consists of millions of MSME players, from small traders and farmers to craftsmen. They are the backbone of Indonesia’s people’s economy. How likely was such a business to falter? A business that touches the real lives of millions of people felt far more understandable to me than the fluctuations of nickel prices on the London market. I thought I was making a smarter, more measured, and safer choice. I felt I had calculated correctly. But the market, it turned out, had a different opinion.
Two years later, I opened my portfolio application with a feeling that is difficult to describe. The ANTM shares I had sold had seen their price skyrocket. Meanwhile, the BBRI shares I bought at a high price were now worth only half as much. In terms of capital gain, my loss was real. There is no point in denying it. I have been investing long enough to know that denying a loss only delays the learning process. Acknowledge first, understand later. Because if we are busy defending a decision that has proven wrong, we will never truly learn from it.
What actually happened with BBRI? Interestingly, it was not the business that was in trouble. BBRI continued to book profits, its network kept expanding, and its millions of MSME customers did not go anywhere. What depressed its price were factors beyond management’s control. Massive foreign fund outflows due to MSCI index rebalancing, a rise in the Bank Indonesia benchmark interest rate, a weakening rupiah, and pressure on the microcredit segment as inflation eroded small debtors’ purchasing power. All of this battered market sentiment, not the company’s fundamentals. This is an important lesson that is often forgotten. Share price and business value are two things that can move in opposite directions, at least in the short term. The market is not always rational, and that irrationality can last longer than we expect.
Was my decision to sell ANTM and buy BBRI a mistake? My analysis of ANTM was not wrong. Mining stocks are indeed very sensitive to global commodity prices. Anyone holding ANTM shares must be prepared for volatility coming from unexpected directions, such as other countries’ policies, global industrial demand, or even geopolitical tensions. Exiting ANTM was not a wrong decision. It was a logical decision for my risk profile at the time. My analysis of BBRI was also not wrong. The bank’s fundamentals remain strong. Its network is extraordinary. Its market has not gone anywhere. Indonesia’s MSMEs did not suddenly disappear. What I missed was not the analysis. What I missed was the timing, and more deeply, I forgot that the market does not always reward logic at the time we want it to. The market has its own schedule, and that schedule can never be booked. We can be right about the company, but wrong about the timing. In the stock market, both are equally decisive for the final outcome.