Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa October 2014 | Page 14

MASTER INVESTOR

rich-quick scheme. It takes dedication, knowledge and
discipline to succeed.”
When asked if ordinary investors could be richer
than Buffet, Magliolo says that many investors measure
themselves against Buffett, but then try to be day
traders. Short-term trading using long-term technicals
is a recipe for financial ruin. Only patience and
discipline in trading, following a self-imposed strategy,
enables you to make more profits than losses. To do
this incrementally can make you significantly larger
amounts over time. Buffett is a proponent of long-term
investing. In Jacques’s books, he suggests that a trader
needs to have a long-term investment strategy, but
to expedite growth with short-term methods to take
advantage of market anomalies.
Where it all started
Jacques was born in 1961 in Essaouira, a small fishing
village in Morocco, where he spent his formative years.
His mother was French and his father was Sicilian. His
grandfather was a well invested ship owner, who owned
large tracts of Moroccan property, including land on
the coastal platinum mile of Morocco valued at over
350 million Euros.
The Agadir earthquake in the early 1960s devastated
a large part of Morocco, setting off tidal waves and
fires, and killing almost 12,000 people. This prompted
Magliolo to move to Casablanca in 1962. When he
was eight, his family decided to immigrate to South
Africa, settling in Port Elizabeth. Jacques was schooled
at St. Augustine’s school and knew that he wanted to
be a stockbroker from a very young age. He learnt how
to read the stock market prices on the listing pages
in the business section of the daily newspaper and
subsequently studied Economics at the University of
Port Elizabeth where he graduated in 1986 with a B
Comm. degree majoring in Law and Economics.
The Apprentice
In his last year at University, Jacques phoned a number
of leading stock broking firms in Johannesburg to
pitch for a job as a stockbroker. They advised him to
get as much knowledge and experience first and to
phone when he was more educated on the market,
gained more experience, and had learnt more about
investments and the workings of stockbroking.
He immediately applied for a position at Times
Media, publishers of Financial Mail magazine and
got onto the graduate training programme. Within
six months he was transferred into their investment
division. He spent over two years at Financial Mail
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October 2014 SA Real Estate Investor

obtaining the necessary experience required to become
a stockbroker.
In 1990, after his stint with Times Media, he
contacted the same stockbrokers and this time around
he was hired as a strategist. Jacques worked his way up
to becoming head of research and corporate finance at
stockbrokers Global Capital Securities before leaving
the “formal” industry in July 2000.
Jacques especially enjoys the trading, research and
analytical side of the business. He realised that there
was an opportunity to combine the two in stockbroking,
as you can’t trade Futures without research. Nobody
seemed interested in combining corporate finance
and research. His philosophy of synergising corporate
finance, due diligence and research was new in the
industry.
In 2000, Jacques set up his own business consultancy
called Business Consultants International (BCI). It
concentrates on assisting entrepreneurs to restructure
their firms to become more efficient and ultimately
more profitable. He has developed a four phase
approach to corporate intelligence, which includes
market research and analysis, due diligence, business
plans, corporate profiles and implementation strategies.
Mag