1. “The last time I made any market predictions was in the year 1914, when my firm judged me qualified to write their daily market letter based on the fact that I had one month’s experience. Since then I have given up making predictions.” You will not outperform the market in making macroeconomic forecasts. This series of blog posts makes that same point over and over. The record of the great investors […]
1. “In many areas of the market, there will be a loser for every winner so, on average, investors will get the return of that market less fees.” The mathematics of what he describes is inescapable. Costs and expenses are a huge drag on investing performance. 2. “The Prussian General Clausewitz has said, ‘The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.’ And […]
1. “We need to stop pretending that we can divine the future, and instead concentrate on understanding the present, and preparing for the unknown.” Montier makes the same point as others have repeatedly made in this series of blog posts: “Frankly the three blind mice have more credibility than any macroforecaster at seeing what is coming.” In addition to bets where possible future states are known and probabilities are […]
The task I gave myself in this blog post was to distill Warren Buffett’s investing wisdom into my “Dozen Things” format but do so in only twelve sentences (instead of the usual 999 word limit). I tried to make each sentence build on the previous sentence(s). One could write a book about how Warren Buffett (there are many), but reducing it to an essential core is also valuable. I wrote this list […]
1. “I never ask if the market is going to go up or down, because I don’t know, and besides it doesn’t matter. I search nation after nation for stocks, asking: Where is the one that is lowest priced in relation to what I believe its worth?” Like every other great investor in this series of blog posts John did do not make bets based on macroeconomic predictions. What […]
1. “All the great investors I’ve ever studied have felt macroeconomics is one of the silliest wastes of time possible.” There is a nonlinear relationship between the simplicity of the system you are trying to understand and your ability to make bets which can generate alpha. The simplest system that one can work at understanding is an individual company. Charlie Munger puts it this way: “Be a business analyst, not […]
As part of my “A Dozen Things I’ve Learned” series of blog posts I thought I would take on a list put together by Barry Ritholtz . My self-assigned task is to add my support to what Barry wrote http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/10/ritholtzs-rules-of-investing/, while staying with my usual 999 word limit for any given blog post. The task I assigned to myself is to elaborate on what he has written (rather than just repeating what […]
1. “As time goes on, I get more and more convinced that the right method in investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprises which one thinks one knows something about and in the management of which one thoroughly believes.” Keynes started investing on behalf of King’s College in 1924 and because he believed he knew a lot about macroeconomics, he made a lot of macroeconomic-based bets. During […]
1. “In many companies strategy is built around the value proposition, which is the demand side of the equation. But …it’s [also] about the supply side.” In his classic “Five Minute University” routine on Saturday Night Live the comedian “Father Guido Sarducci” pointed out: “Economics? Supply and Demand. That’s it.’” What Michael Porter did after graduating from Harvard Business School was to go across the Charles River and get […]
1. “The biggest investing errors come not from factors that are informational or analytical, but from those that are psychological.” Psychological mistakes are at the same time the biggest source of danger for an investor and the biggest source of opportunity when other people succumb to those mistakes. If you can keep your head about you when everyone else is losing theirs, you can profit in ways which beat the […]