Intelsense Capital Blog: Curiosity@Intelsense

Multidisciplinary learning is one of the best ways to improve our investment acumen. Here is a summary of some of the best learnings of the week. If you like this collection, consider forwarding it to someone who you think will appreciate it.

You can sign up to https://www.getrevue.co/profile/intelsense to receive all blogs from me directly into your inbox.

To subscribe to any of Intelsense Research services, visit www.intelsense.in. If you wish to know more about our PMS offerings, mail us atequity@intelsense.in

Blood tests for detecting cancer

Doctors have told health services to prepare for a new era of cancer screening after a study found a simple blood test could spot multiple cancer types in patients before they develop clear symptoms.

The Pathfinder study offered the blood test to more than 6,600 adults aged 50 and over, and detected dozens of new cases of disease. Many cancers were at an early stage and nearly three-quarters were forms not routinely screened for.

Beyond spotting the presence of disease, the test predicts where the cancer is, allowing doctors to fast-track the follow-up work needed to locate and confirm a cancer. “The signal of origin was very helpful in directing the type of work-up,” said Schrag. “When the blood test was positive, it typically took under three months to get the work-ups completed.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/11/galleri-blood-test-multiple-cancers-before-clear-symptoms-study

Humans never change. The stock market never changes.

I don’t mean that in a dismissive way as in, “Oh, people are so bad. That will never change. We’re doomed.” When I talk about human behavior, I talk about it in a non-judgmental way. I try to understand what we usually do, and not necessarily whether it’s good or bad.

To be a good investor, we should not only focus on learning the fundamentals or technicals of investing, we should also learn about the behavior of humans. Not just in the stock market but in life.

When you let go of your expectations to get rich in the stock market, you can focus on the beauty of the market. It’s truly one of the most fascinating inventions of the world.

Where else can you go to learn about money, businesses, psychology, history, and most importantly: About yourself. The stock market is a ruthless system that punishes your mistakes with a vengeance. But it also rewards you when you do the right thing.

That’s what makes it so beautiful; because it’s honest.

https://dariusforoux.com/investor-behavior/

Determination is fueled by ambition

Most people don’t know how ambitious to be, especially when they’re young. They don’t know what’s hard, or what they’re capable of. And this problem is exacerbated by having few peers. Ambitious people are rare, so if everyone is mixed together randomly, as they tend to be early in people’s lives, then the ambitious ones won’t have many ambitious peers. When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water. Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they’d get from ambitious peers, whatever their age.

Achievements also tend to increase your ambition. With each step you gain confidence to stretch further next time.

So here in sum is how determination seems to work: it consists of wilfulness balanced with discipline, aimed by ambition. And fortunately at least two of these three qualities can be cultivated. You may be able to increase your strength of will somewhat; you can definitely learn self-discipline; and almost everyone is practically malnourished when it comes to ambition.

http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html

Thought of the Week

“I would say my concept of value has changed to a more relative sense of valuation, based on the expected growth rate applied against the price of the stock. Some people call that GARP (growth at a reasonable price), I’d call it value. I think that’s just semantics.”

~ Julian Robertson

Audio/Video of the Week

The history of our world in 18 minutes - David Christian