Weekend Reading

 

Upfront

Intelsense Equity Research Services

And now on to the weekend reading...

Stan Druckenmiller on investing

When it comes to investing, I like a multi-disciplinary approach. My first boss taught me technical analysis. So, I use fundamental analysis and technical analysis. If there are 1000s of securities out there and my portfolio is only going to have 15-20, I’m never going to buy something that doesn’t have a great chart and fundamentals.   When I’ve looked at all the investors (that) have very large reputations — Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, George Soros — they all only have one thing in common.   And it’s the exact opposite of what they teach in a business school. It is to make large concentrated bets where they have a lot of conviction.   They’re not buying 35 or 40 names and diversifying.   I don’t know whether you remember that Icahn a few years ago put $5B into Apple. I don’t think he was worth more than $10B when he did that. https://thehustle.co/stanley-druckenmiller-q-and-a-trung-phanin/

The greatest threat to results are boredom and impatience

The only way to become good at something is to practice the ordinary basics for an uncommon length of time. Most people get bored. They want excitement. They want something to talk about and no one talks about the boring basics. For example, we know that dollar-cost averaging into an index fund is likely to generate wealth, but cryptocurrency will give us a bigger thrill. Boredom encourages you to stop doing what you know works and do something that might work.   Another way to mess up a good thing is to try and accelerate the natural pace of things into an unnatural one. A good idea taken to the extreme is always a bad idea. Working out for 15 hours a day won’t make you healthier, it will get you injured. Investing with a lot of leverage won’t make you rich faster, it will wipe you out. A lack of patience changes the outcome.   It’s hard to be above average if you can’t find a way to do the same thing over and over again. As Bruce Lee observed, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”   In a world of social media, we glorify the results and not the process. We see the kick that knocked someone out but not the years of effort that went into perfecting it. We see the results, not the hard work.   The difference between good and great results is often found in consistently doing the boring things you know you should do exactly when you feel like doing them the least. https://fs.blog/brain-food/may-22-2022/

How to be great

The first step in becoming great is recognizing that you’re likely not already great. In fact, it comes from recognizing that there is no such thing as greatness at a specific instance in time. Greatness is instead a reflection of a period of effort, since greatness in a single instance can be reduced to luck.   There’s a false impression that success or notoriety comes with being flashy. This notion comes from the media focusing on outliers, whether it be events or personalities which diverge from the norm. Not only can this encourage people to aim for notoriety just for the sake of it (think Elizabeth Holmes), but it makes the rest of us believe that correlation (of those outliers) is causation; in other words, success of those individuals is due to their offbeat ways. But here’s another storyline: the most sure and therefore the best way to “success” is through consistency.   If you don’t have the opportunity to “do great things”, focus on consistently achieving small wins. These small things in fact do not need to be done in a great way, but a good way, repeatably. In fact, I would advise not to focus on perfection, as it is often the enemy of the successful.   There’s glimmer and hoopla around unpredictability, but in reality, it’s much more difficult and therefore impressive, to be predictably good. https://blog.stephsmith.io/how-to-be-great/

Beware of the bear market psychology

Bear markets are an inescapable feature of equity investing. They are also the greatest challenge that investors will face. This is not because of the (hopefully temporary) losses that will be suffered, but the poor choices we are liable to make during them. Bear markets change the decision-making dynamic entirely. In a bear market, smart long-term decisions often look foolish in the short-term; whereas in a bull market foolish long-term decisions often look smart in the short-term.   As share prices fall, hindsight bias will run amok. It will seem obvious that this environment was coming – the warning signs were everywhere. We will blithely ignore all the other periods where red flags were abundant and no such market decline occurred.   Bear markets induce panic, which means our time horizons shorten dramatically. We stop worrying about the value of our portfolio in thirty years and start thinking about the next thirty minutes. Being a long-term investor gets even more difficult during a bear market. https://behaviouralinvestment.com/2022/05/24/what-we-should-remember-about-bear-markets/

Build in slack into your routine for better effectiveness

Many organizations are obsessed with efficiency. They want to be sure every resource is utilized to its fullest capacity and everyone is sprinting around every minute of the day doing something. They hire expert consultants to sniff out the faintest whiff of waste.   As individuals, many of us are also obsessed with the mirage of total efficiency. We schedule every minute of our day, pride ourselves on forgoing breaks, and berate ourselves for the slightest moment of distraction. We view sleep, sickness, and burnout as unwelcome weaknesses and idolize those who never seem to succumb to them. This view, however, fails to recognize that efficiency and effectiveness are not the same thing.   Having a little bit of wiggle room allows us to respond to changing circumstances, to experiment, and to do things that might not work.   Slack consists of excess resources. It might be time, money, people on a job, or even expectations. Slack is vital because it prevents us from getting locked into our current state, unable to respond or adapt because we just don’t have the capacity. https://fs.blog/slack/