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 […]
1. “Money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.” George Soros, like other great investors, is very focused on “expected value.” Expected value is equal to the weighted-average value for the distribution of possible outcomes (the payoff for a given outcome is multiplied by the probability that this outcome will occur). A bet which is unexpected by the crowd is only wise when the expected […]
1. “Nobody can predict interest rates, the future direction of the economy, or the stock market. Dismiss all such forecasts and concentrate on what’s actually happening to the companies in which you’ve invested.” It is far more productive for an investor to focus their time and energy on systems which are potentially understandable in a way which might reveal a mispriced asset. George Soros said once: “Unfortunately, the more […]
1. “Payoffs from research are from Extremistan; they follow a power-law type of statistical distribution, with big, near-unlimited upside but, because of optionality, limited downside.” Nassim Taleb. http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Gain-Disorder/dp/1400067820/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372633921&sr=8-1&keywords=antifragile Valuing a technology company is uniquely hard. The probability of any company encountering a positive or negative Black Swan is impossible to compute since you can’t assign a probability to an unknown “future state.” It is simply not mathematically possible. And […]
1. “Many individual investors lose consistently by trading, an achievement that a dart-throwing chimp could not match.” Leonard the Wonder Monkey will beat a muppet in an investing contest. Not only will muppets lose to a dart throwing monkey, they will do worse than chance would dictate, especially after fees because of certain behavioral biases. 2. “Few stock pickers, if any, have the skill needed to beat the market consistently, […]
1. “Few are willing and able to devote sufficient time and effort to become value investors, and only a fraction of those have the proper mind-set to succeed.” A tiny number of hard working and emotionally disciplined people who understand how to value a business can earn financial returns that are better than the market. It is highly unlikely that you are one of those people, but it is possible. […]
1. “The only certainty is that there is no certainty… With uncertainty, the underlying distribution of outcomes is undefined, while with risk we know what that distribution looks like. Corporate undulation is uncertain; roulette is risky…” There is no single number which can be used to predict the future price of an investment because the future is not only risky (like roulette) but uncertain (unknown unknowns). There are known future […]
1. “The problem is that extraordinary performance comes only from correct non-consensus forecasts, but non-consensus forecasts are hard to make, hard to make correctly and hard to act on.” Howard Marks. http://www.go2cio.com/quote/index.php?page=50 Humans are terrible forecasters for many reasons explained by behavioral economics, not the least of which is that we often see false patterns and ascribe false meaning to them. Having great pattern recognition skill is critical in venture […]
“The best example of narrow framing that I can think of is the use of pro forma earnings. Essentially this is a company turning up and saying, hello I’m lying to you, these are the earnings I didn’t make, but I’d be jolly grateful if we could all just pretend I did.” (Framing bias) James Montier http://www.investmentpostcards.com/2010/03/11/interview-james-montier-on-value-investing/ Our brains only have so much cognitive capacity so humans suffer from in-attentional […]
1. “[At a horse racing track people make] bets and the odds change based on what’s bet. That’s what happens in the stock market.” Charlie Munger. http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/02/a-lesson-on-elementary-worldly-wisdom-as-it-relates-to-investment-management-business/ Betting on a horse which is the favorite or a longshot may or not be a good bet. What matters is whether the bet is *mispriced* in your favor. Stocks are exactly the same. The stock market is *often* efficient, but it is not […]