quick hits that don't scale well (or at all)

[valsecito]

Hi all!

A question about the bottom rungs of investing and building wealth. Think how easy a $2000 win can be versus a $10000 win.

I've observed how spectacular relative returns are quite easy with small investments, versus outright difficult at scale. As an example,  one could get to know about an extremely underpriced car, buy it  at $2000, and resell it shortly afterwards at $4000 with a nice 100%/$2000 profit. Realising similar relative returns at a $100 000 000 turnover company would be exponentially more difficult.

I'm sure quite a few mustachians know what I mean. There's probably a law in economics that speaks about this, with its own Wikipedia page and whatnot. I'd be interesting to hear about that, but my main question is...

Do you have a strategy for discovering limited-scale (say $10000 investment) high relative return opportunities? What are you exploiting? What patterns are you looking for? Where?

Kind regards,

Valsecito

[scrubbyfish]

I have absolutely relied on these. Besides real estate (which is a gamble, but I was buying for nongamble reasons), my most lucrative have been grants (free money for what I was doing anyway), business projects (investing $100 in my own ideas vs another business's stock), and matching grants (employer via 401k, RESP in Canada, etc). $100 in and $32k out, or a 300% match, etc.

Leveraging the above has been critical to my path (which I explore in detail in my new book, linked to below if you're interested).

[Goldielocks]

I have just realized (while shopping for camping / backpack gear) that there is a tremendous value gap between Ebay, Garage sales, thrift stores and craigslist in pricing...  Thrift store is $12, and craigslist is $60;   $30 versus $100... and it continues.

If you put in the time, you can buy things at the thrift store, and resell on craigslist (or ebay for specific high value items) at a great profit. 

You need a system, though, as your time is not free.