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The hardest part of vacations is getting caught up on everything after you get back. Email is the worst. Reading is a close second only because there is so much more to wade through in a limited amount of time.
I’m almost caught up. Two things I did read are worth highlighting, so I pulled a few quotes from each. Links to both are below. Continue Reading…
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Any chump can bet all their money on a single stock and get wiped out. But it takes a special kind of genius to invest and consistently lose money in the market. They follow one mistake with another, compounding their losses with opportunity cost.
To avoid the same fate, we can steal a few lessons in how to lose money from the great investors who came before us. Continue Reading…
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There was great discussion at a Techonomy conference around cyber security, personal data, privacy, and transparency around all the “free” services we use. Is it a fair value exchange of free service for our data, how tech companies use the information, who owns the information, and potential regulation and oversight of it all where some of the topics covered. There’s no definitive conclusion other then it’s complicated – self-regulation is unlikely to work – but it’s a good discussion for users and investors alike.
The conference streamed live about a week ago and all the videos were published this week. The video embedded below is the discussion mentioned above with Bill Gurley, Mark Rotenberg, and Hemant Taneja. Continue Reading…
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Learning from other’s mistakes is a better way to learn than hoping to make them all yourself and learn along the way. There’s far less pain involved – this typically involves big losses in investing – and you get a secondary lesson from other investors being humble. That second part you don’t see very often.
There are a few great investors who seem to bring it up mistakes all the time. Buffett does this annually in his letters. I came across two others – Seth Klarman and Howard Marks – discussing it in a transcript from the 2008 Graham and Dodd Symposium. Continue Reading…
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Everyone and no one knows what the next four years will bring. The prediction machine is running overtime on a narrative for the markets and country that fit with Tuesday’s results. Yet, nobody really knows. So take it all with a grain of salt.
So what does this mean for your money? Emotions are running high. Self-control is key. Continue Reading…
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Seth Klarman has been critical of index funds in the past. He’s been equally critical of active funds. It turns out, the behavior of fund managers and investors can work against each other. Career risk, short-termism, optimism, return chasing, and herd mentality can lead managers, investors, and markets astray.
I recently read three articles in which Klarman covered this. Below are some of his thoughts. Continue Reading…