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If you want better than average returns you have to be different from everyone else. I’m poorly paraphrasing Howard Marks, but it’s true.
Behaving better than everyone else, buying when valuations are low, having a longer holding period, and becoming an expert are all simple ways to be different. Simple, but not easy.
Mario Gabelli has this figured out. He shared his investing philosophy in a recent interview: Continue Reading…
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In case you missed it, the latest Marks Memo (pdf) was released last Friday. It’s an homage to Yogi Berra specifically and sports generally. The comparison between sports and investing are used widely because it’s an analogy most of us can relate to on some level and the lessons learned tend to overlap.
Much like Buffett uses Ted Williams to explain his investment philosophy, Marks uses bits of Yogi, baseball, football, fantasy sports, and tennis to explain his. Continue Reading…
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The importance of studying history is a recurring theme from many great investors. Yet, history is probably the most ignored part of investing.
There’s a number of reasons I’m sure. But I was reminded of this while listening to a recent interview with Jason Zweig. He said: Continue Reading…
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Every decision you make comes with the chance of being wrong. Being wrong isn’t something we like to think about, but it matters.
Limiting your decisions, those potential points of failure, can improve your portfolio returns. It definitely impacts your costs, your free time, and your sanity.
So a good goal would be to streamline your investment process to the fewest possible (bad) decisions. Continue Reading…
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Peter Lynch is one of the greatest fund managers ever. Though, it’s been over two decades since he managed money, the lessons he learned are timeless.
Lynch ran the Fidelity Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990. During that time, he beat the pants off the market. He outpaced the S&P 500 11 out of 13 years, averaging a 29% annual return. From start to finish, that’s a 2700% return!
Lynch documented his experience in two books: One Up on Wall Street and Beating the Street. The lessons you’ll take away from both books far exceeds the ten below.
Every day brings something different to worry about – inflation, recession, depression, natural disaster, war, market crash, and that bus when you cross the street. In the last 100 years, the market has seen it all and recovered. You can wait for the sky to fall or you can invest knowing it will happen, you’ll get through it, and the market will too. Continue Reading…
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Three choices exist for every investment decision – buy, sell, and do nothing. Probably the most overlooked part of each choice is taxes.
Taxes are decided by what you buy, what you paid for it, what you’re paid while you own it, when you sell it, and what you sell it for. Simply, income and realized gains get taxed. Gains are a direct result of buying and selling. Notice, there is no capital gains tax for doing nothing. Continue Reading…