James Montier: How To Protect Yourself From Wall Street’s ‘Self-Serving’ Biases

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In his book – The Little Book of Behavioral Investing, James Montier wrote a great passage on how investors can identify and protect themselves from becoming victims of Wall Street’s self-serving biases. Here’s an excerpt from that book: So much for nature. Nurture also helps to generate the generally rose-tinted … Read More

Seth Klarman: One Of Society’s Most Vexing Problems Is The Relentlessly Short-Term Orientation That Manifests Itself In Investing

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We’ve just been reading Seth Klarman’s latest speech at the Harvard Business School. During the speech Klarman provides some great insights into the problems with a short-term orientation in investing. Here’s an excerpt from the speech: Consider corporate time horizons. It’s a choice to attempt to maximize corporate results over … Read More

Howard Marks: Avoiding All Losses Can Render Success Unachievable Almost As Readily As Can The Occurrence Of Too Many Losses

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In his 2014 memo – Dare To Be Great, Howard Marks says successful investing includes dealing with some losses saying: “To succeed at any activity involving the pursuit of gain, we have to be able to withstand the possibility of loss. A goal of avoiding all losses can render success … Read More

Michael Burry: Measuring Money Managers By ‘Relative Performance’ Harms Their Ability To Invest Intelligently

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Seth Klarman has often spoken about the nonsense of measuring fund managers by their ‘relative performance’. That is, measuring the performance of their investments against various market benchmarks. A quick read through Michael Burry’s Scion Capital shareholder letters shows that he’s also not a fan of relative performance as a … Read More

Stanley Druckenmiller: What Should Investors Do If They’re In A ‘Slump’

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Here’s a great interview with investing legend Stanley Druckenmiller at Real Vision in which he discusses the importance of investors knowing whether they’re currently ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ with regards picking investments. He also provides some great insights into what you should do if you find yourself in an investing slump. … Read More

Dan Loeb: We Continue To Invest In The Integration Of Our Fundamental Process And The “Rise of the Machines”

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Dan Loeb recently released his Q32018 shareholder letter in which he discusses the difficulty of investing in the market this year, the current market environment, and how he plans to invest in the future. Here’s an excerpt from that letter: In the hit NBC television show The Good Place, (spoiler … Read More

Jim Chanos: “Being Short With A Good Short Seller Who’s Producing Nominally Minor Positive Returns In A Bull Market Enables You To Be More Long”

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One of our favorite Jim Chanos interviews is one he did with FT Alphachatterbox in which he explained how short selling provides ‘long-side’ investors with an insurance policy saying: “Being short with a good short seller who’s producing nominally minor positive returns in a bull market enables you to be … Read More

Charlie Munger: Moral Investing – We Could See It Was Like Putting $100 Million In A Bushel Basket And Setting It On Fire As We Walked Away

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Here’s a great video with Charles Munger and Warren Buffett at the 2005 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in which they discuss the moral distinction between buying a stock and a company. Here’s an excerpt from the video: CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. I think he’s asking in part, are there some businesses … Read More

Joel Greenblatt: Redefining ‘Traditional’ Value Investing So That It Never Goes Out Of Favor

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Here’s a great interview with Joel Greenblatt at Bloomberg in which he discusses the types of businesses he’s currently looking for and how he’s redefined the ‘traditional’ value investing strategy so that it never goes out of favor’ Here’s an excerpt from the interview: We try to stick to companies … Read More

Bruce Greenwald: How Smart Investors Can Take Advantage Of Overconfident Investors – Which Is Most Of Us!

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We’ve just been watching Bruce Greenwald’s 2014 presentation at the International Post Keynesian Conference in which he illustrates how smart investors can take advantage of overconfident investors, which is most of us, saying: Human beings are constituted and cannot stop themselves from believing they know what they know with a … Read More

Murray Stahl: “Perhaps A Superior Method To Reduce Portfolio Risk Could Be To Have No Diversification. If You Had Only One Holding”

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We’ve just been reading the latest Q318 market commentary by Murray Stahl which discusses the possible benefits of concentrating ones portfolio to achieve outperformance. His article illustrates how this concentrated approach led to some serious outperformance by three of the greatest investors of all time, Warren Buffett, Charles Munger, and … Read More