Category Archives: YOU

Update on Analyst Course, Part 2, Readers’uggestions

An excellent HBO 90-minute special on Buffett. Even if you are sick of hearing about Buffett, this is an excellent video.  Susan Buffett, wife of Warren, “He was reading ALL THE TIME.”

A book on strategy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above book is an excellent primer on how to view company presentations on their future plans/strategy.   There are not many good books on strategy, but this is one.  View: http://goodbadstrategy.com/background-materials/. I would trade 100 Good to Great books for one of the above.

readers’ suggestions

I would be extremely interested in analyst course you put together especially with emphasis on lots of case studies from the superinvestors used to teach the principles of valuation. I stumbled upon the course schedules of Mentals models course at Columbia University which could help you in your effort to design the course. Please find attached: mental-models-columbia-gbs-2012-syllabus

As Warren Buffet says there should be just two courses taught in valuation

  1. How to value a Business
  2. How to think about market prices

I think for most of us who are not in the field professionally, we can read all about investing in theory from books and articles but lack the practical experience and applications.  So actively doing the case studies and having the critique and feedback would be great for this course. Otherwise, we are on our own with no one to tell us how to improve or where we went wrong and what was missed.

Sharing and demonstrating how certain things are done/calculated would be great help for myself who is a kinesthetic learner and learn best through doing it practically.

Hey John, I’m very interested in the analyst course. I’ve been reading several books on improving skills i.e Cal Newport’s books, Talent Code etc by looking at various domain i.e chess, music etc where the best does it through deliberate practice and I think in investing domain there has been a lack of these structured learning, although all the case studies you’ve presented here are a great starting point.

Maybe another point which can be included in the course could be method of analysis for some key sectors like banks, insurance, Oi and Gas E&P. It could be helpful if we could get sector special books like Sam Walton for retail etc. helps in understanding key points of the sector

I pick Warren Buffett as the first investment master to imitate. Reading his letter (‘Complete Buffett Partnership Letters 1957 to 1970’ and ‘Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders’ ) to understand ‘what actually done by him’ and followed by additional reading (sources: ie csinvesting.com / You Tube / Books such as ‘The Intelligent Investor’, ‘Security Analysis’, ‘BUFFETT The Making of an American capitalist’, ‘ Warren Buffett Speaks-Wit and Wisdom from the World Greatest Investor’, ‘Inside the Investments of Warren Buffett’ and etc ) to understand the rational or whatever be discussed about his action. Later put the knowledge into practice and learning from own mistakes.

Thereafter I would adopt the same learning method on other investment master such as Mohnish Pabrai and Howard Marks.

The primary intention is to truly understand the investment philosophy behind them by knowing the gap (or difference), if any, between the saying and the action.

It’s an interesting idea. A few thoughts from my end: – You could organize each section to teach a fundamental skill or lesson and then have a case study that requires you to understand that lesson in-depth. – As part of the course, students should have to create at least one succinct pitch for a stock. – There could be sub-groups that are assigned that work together, offer each other feedback, etc. – Rather than charge for the course, you could have students commit to doing the work with one of the habit-forming/public-contract sites (i.e. stickk, beeminder)

Can we actually look at some current case studies?  Maybe reverse engineer the rationale for buying by some of the greats?

This sounds like an awesome idea. I have been trying to go back and read the Deep Value course this group was supposedly made for. I am going through the stuff slowly but there is some conflicting information. It will be great if we can have some course which puts everything together.

I would put something in there on developing qualitative theories behind investment decisions. How best to vet management, employees, and other stakeholders such as upstream and downstream participants. Most people on this site I would assume wouldn’t have direct access like major investors and sell side analysts do, so developing a theory on how to mimic these interactions through information sources would be a benefit. 

basic quantitative research might be a good value add also. Paying some of these sites multiple thousands of dollars for basic search criteria is frustrating, when basic developed quant and programming skills could replace them. And the ability to automate many processes would be a good point to. I guess this falls into the “improving you” section. 

I never got through the Best Practices of Equity Research Analysts, but there’s probably a structure in there to model off of. 

 —

Definitely a module of one-on-one interviews or presentations major investors have given at events like value investing congress would be good for putting positions in perspective. Also, since not everyone here would be a PM at a 10B hedge fund, investing across asset classes and differently sized capitalizations is very important. If Buffett is correct, then all of us managing less than 5M should be able to return 50% Let’s put that to the test. Let’s build portfolios together and give critique, as we go through the process and the modules. Maybe assigning people committed to doing the modules to working groups would benefit that process too. Applying as we go is probably the best way to reinforce the material, so it’s not just something learned and reviewed, and then forgotten. Studying for the CFA, I learned a tremendous amount of information, however I haven’t had to apply 95% of it to my work, so it’s nearly all forgotten unless I go back to heavily review.

Lastly, I would do a module on investing in different industries. Since investing in financials is not like investing in medical devices. What are the key metrics, kpi’s to these businesses. What are the nuances of investing in each of these industries since they are unique. 

If you needed any help in construction I would be willing to participate. I’m currently leaving my company, and actively searching and networking for a new career path on the asset management track, so I will have the time and interest.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

  

 

 

 

 

Recent Munger Wisdom

Recent Munger Transcript 340444245-Munger-2017-DJCO-Transcript340444245-Munger-2017-DJCO-Transcript

 

Why do you do what you do?

What’s your purpose?   (from $prezzaturian)

Why do you do what you do? Why do you drink what you drink, eat what you eat, eat where you eat, dress the way you dress?

Why do you check your social media dozens of times a day?

When I was young, including when I went to college, there was no internet, no mobile phones, no social media. There was nothing to check to get that dopamine kick. Instead I read books, thought, did sports, or played.

I’m not saying life was better, since it wasn’t. Internet connected smartphones have their uses; a lot of them. However, mindlessly wasting time on updating likes, reading memes for a second’s amusement or smirk aren’t among them.

I’m sure you wouldn’t bother to turn on a turned off phone to see “what’s going on” in your Twitter flow. But when the phone is already on, the kick is just a second away, hence you do it again and again.

Short meaningless kicks with no motion forward. But what should you do instead, what do you really want?

What are you waiting for? Why are you just passing time? Or is Twitter, Angry Birds and dinner all you care for?

Why do you live? Why did you go to school? Why do you work so hard? Why are you building that life “platform”, of house, car, boat, work, status…, so intently?

What is it that really drives you? What makes you happy? (see my previous article from December 2015 on everyday happiness) What do you enjoy doing without posting it on social media?

  • Just make money like Buffett
  • Quality time with your closest friends
  • Work hard, play hard; essentially buy expensive toys and travels
  • Experience as much as possible, through, e.g., various travels and trips
  • What would you actually change if you had a billion, i.e., after buying a house, securing transportation and getting a better computer or phone, how would you change what you do in a given day? Do you really need (much) more money than you already have to to that?

Start with your why

(an inspiring book and TED talk about identifying and pursuing your true drivers). The book deals with how to be successful by knowing your ultimate purpose, but I’ve interpreted the question a little more freely.

Once you’ve fulfilled your basic needs in terms of internet connection, food and shelter, what is your WHY for getting up in the morning, for going through the motions?

Which people do you want to spend time with? Doing what? How do you plan to feel good, to feel relevant? How do you want to express yourself? Who do you want to be?

On that topic, by the way, Buffett had this to say in the clip in TrendFollowing: “Think of a few character traits you admire in others, and a few you loathe. Act to become the person you admire the most

Summary: Just ask why

Ask WHY before checking your phone (app that counts how much you check)

Ask WHY before accepting that invitation

Ask WHY you’d do A, and thus miss out on B (alternative cost)

Ask WHY you want more money, status, fame, in exchange for your limited time

Ask WHY you are a member there, why you go to the gym, why you keep postponing what you really want to do, WHY you keep investing but never reaping?

Ask WHY you post things online. Wouldn’t you enjoy your food, your vacation, your expensive car, your tour on a yacht if you couldn’t get any likes?

Then what is it really worth to you?

MUST LISTEN: http://trendfollowingradio.com/ep-526-i-will-survive-with-michael-covel-on-trend-following-radio

free e-book and sign up for the newsletter. ($prezzaturian Newsletter)

Lesson-on-Elementary-Worldly-Wisdom-Charlie-Munger

 

Time to Index? Got Gold?

A portfolio manager who will manage the Dogs of the Dow Portfolio.

Most institutional and individual investors will find the best way to own common stock is through an index fund that charges minimal fees. Those following this path are sure to beat the net results after fees and expenses delivered by the great majority of investment professionals. –Warren Buffett.

A minuscule 4% of funds produce market-beating after-tax results with a scant 0.6% annual margin of gain. The 96% of funds that fail to meet or beat the Vanguard 500 index Fund lose by a wealth-destroying margin of 4% per annum.  “Unless an investor has access to incredibly highly qualified professionals, they should be 100 percent indexed. That includes almost all investors and most institutional investors. –David Swensen, chief investment officer, Yale University.

“In modern markets, most institutions and almost all individuals will experience better results with index funds.” –Benjamin Graham.

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Thos who predict, don’t have knowledge. — Lao Tzu, 6th Century B.C.

I am reading, The Index Revolution: Why Investors Should Join It Now by Charles D. Ellis

The author presents a compelling case why most individuals should index:

  1. Indexing outperforms active investing
  2. Low Fees are an important reason to index
  3. Indexing makes it much easier to focus on your most important investment decisions
  4. Your taxes are lower when you index
  5. Indexing saves operational costs.
  6. Indexing makes most investment risks easier to live with
  7. Indexing avoids “Manager Risk”
  8. Indexing helps you avoid costly troubles with Mr. Market
  9. You have much better things to do with your time.
  10. Experts agree most investors should index

Articles proliferate such as: https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/05/the-numbers-are-in-actively-managed-mutual-funds-a.aspx and research for the past few decades has shown that Index Funds Outperform.

Now lets journey into the real world: https://www.mackenzieinvestments.com/en/prices-performance.  I picked this fund family at random. Look at each of their funds’ long-term performance compared to their comparable benchmarks.   Not ONE outperforms. Not one.   Who in their right mind would invest?    As money managers become desperate to beat the index, they tend to mimic their benchmarks, so their amount of underperformance closes towards the index, but GUARANTEES underperformance due to fees and slippage of commissions and taxes.

Time to pack it in and index?   First, do not underestimate how difficult it is to “outsmart” the market.   I personally believe that the ONLY way–obviously–to do better is to be very different from the indexes.   You will either vastly UNDER-perform or OUTperform.  You have to be different and right.  So how to be right?  You must do things differently like use all available information in the financials (read footnotes and balance sheet), have a longer-term perspective such as five to seven years–at a minimum–three years to give reversion to the mean a chance to work or time for franchises to compound.   You have to pick your spots where you are confident that you are buying from mistaken, uneconomic sellers.   And when you do find a great opportunity (assuming that you can distinguish one) you heavily weight your position.  NOT EASY.

SETH KLARMAN

Here is what Seth Klarman recently said about current conditions (New York Times, Feb. 7th, 2017:

Most hedge funds have found themselves on the losing side of trades over the past several years, a point Mr. Klarman addressed in his letter (2016). Noting that hedge fund returns have underperformed the indexes — he mentioned that hedge funds had returned only 23 percent from 2010 to 2015, compared with 108 percent for the Standard & Poor’s index — he blamed the influx of money into the industry.

“With any asset class, when substantial new money flows in, the returns go down,” Mr. Klarman wrote. “No surprise, then, that as money poured into hedge funds, overall returns have soured.”

He continued, “To many, hedge funds have come to seem like a failed product.”

The lousy performance among hedge funds and the potential for them to go out of business or consolidate, he suggests, may become an opportunity.

Perhaps the most distinctive point he makes — at least that finance geeks will appreciate — is what he says is the irony that investors now “have gotten excited about market-hugging index funds and exchange traded funds (E.T.F.s) that mimic various market or sector indices.”

He says he sees big trouble ahead in this area — or at least the potential for investors in individual stocks to profit.

“One of the perverse effects of increased indexing and E.T.F. activity is that it will tend to ‘lock in’ today’s relative valuations between securities,” Mr. Klarman wrote.

“When money flows into an index fund or index-related E.T.F., the manager generally buys into the securities in an index in proportion to their current market capitalization (often to the capitalization of only their public float, which interestingly adds a layer of distortion, disfavoring companies with large insider, strategic, or state ownership),” he wrote. “Thus today’s high-multiple companies are likely to also be tomorrow’s, regardless of merit, with less capital in the hands of active managers to potentially correct any mispricings.”

To Mr. Klarman, “stocks outside the indices may be cast adrift, no longer attached to the valuation grid but increasingly off of it.”

“This should give long-term value investors a distinct advantage,” he wrote. “The inherent irony of the efficient market theory is that the more people believe in it and correspondingly shun active management, the more inefficient the market is likely to become.”

End.

What do YOU think?

The Attributes of Great Investors

The Attributes of Great Investors

Before you click on article, sit down and write what YOU think.  Be specific.   What steps do you need to take to improve?  So how to go from here to there?

The Attributes of Great Investors_MM

 

 

 

PET ROCKS

Imagine owning a pet that doesn’t need to be trained, walked, fed or groomed — ever. That’s exactly what California ad executive Gary Dahl was after when he came up with pet rocks in 1975. Tired of the hassle and responsibility that came with animate house pets, Dahl developed a toy concept that was 1% product and 99% marketing genius: a garden-variety rock, packaged in a comfy cardboard shipping crate, complete with straw for the rock’s comfort and holes so it could breathe during transport. The Pet Rock Training Manual — a tongue-in-cheek set of guidelines for pet owners, like housebreaking instructions (“Place it on some old newspapers. The rock will never know what the paper is for and will require no further instruction”) — helped turn the scheme from an amusing gag gift into an inexplicable toy craze. By Christmas 1975, Americans were hooked. Although the fad was long gone by the following year, the rocks — which were collected from a beach in Baja, Calif., for pennies each and retailed for $3.95 — made Dahl a multimillionaire in about six months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock and The-Care-and-Training-of-Your-Pet-Rock-Manual-by-Gary-Dahl

BEFORE I became a value investor, I was addicted to bubbles.  I have over 1,200 Pet Rocks lining my Python cage.  I don’t know what the price chart says, but it doesn’t look good that I will be able to resell at a profit.

Also, I have 20,000 Beanie Babies rotting/mildewing in my basement as well.

but there is hope…..http://dailytoa.st/blogs/if-you-have-any-of-these-11-beanie-babies-you-can-retire-now

An amazing story of mass delusion and the dark side of cute.

How to be a Stoic: http://www.perell.com/podcast/massimo

Lessons from Ed Thorp, a self-taught investor: http://www.gurufocus.com/news/473560/the-strip-and-the-street-a-conversation-with-mathematician-hedge-fund-manager-and-blackjack-player-edward-thorp

Edward Thorp: I came at the securities markets without basically any prior knowledge and I educated myself by sitting down and reading anything I could lay my hands on. I began to get oriented, and then I discovered how to evaluate warrants, at least in an elementary way, and I decided that was a way that I could apply mathematics and logical thinking and maybe get an edge in the market.

Using Charts (NVGS)

So if charts have NO FORECASTING ability or, in my humble opinion, no investor/trader can use chart formations like rising wedges, cup and handles, head and shoulders, etc to PREDICT where the market will go IN THE FUTURE. Charts might work for Hindsight Capital, but I have yet to see any research showing the efficacy of chart reading.  Despite that vicious attack on chartists, I do use charts.   Take for example, Navigator’s Holdings (NVGS).   Let’s zero in a bit more:

Note the time period from August 2016 to December 2016.  As the price accelerated downward on larger than normal volume–note in the second week of August the plunge in price from $9.50 t0 $8.10 in one day or about 15%, OUCH!  The price decline occurred on the anouncement of second quarter earnings:

Navigator Holdings misses by $0.04, misses on revenue Aug. 8, 2016

So you have a plunging/falling knife on an “earnings miss” or worse than “expected” news.  Now look at the opposite of the trade. Since I was fundamentally bullish, who was on the other side selling?  First from the holdings, you can see that 41% of the 53 million shares outstanding is held by a private equity firm, Invesco run by Wilbur Ross–a deep value investor. Invesco bought at $9 a share back in 2012, then sold some shares at $20 a year and a half later.  Over 50% of the shares seem to be held by long-term investors.   The NVGS share price had been declining for over two years from $32 per share while it bought more ships, then LPG freight rates declined sharply and the arbitrage shrunk for some of NVGS’s products.  In short, the sudden high volume rapid decline indicated MOTIVATED sellers who were either distressed or late momentum sellers.  Some of the sellers are selling AFTER a long price decline and bad news being announed.  I consider those emotional/weak sellers. Now there is no guarantee that the news won’t worsen and the price won’t keep declining.

I feel confident saying that because NVGS’ balance sheet was not overburdened with debt. See September-2016-Update for NVGS.

INVESCO PRIVATE CAPITAL, INC. 21,863,874 $ 157,201,000 41.05% 53.08% 1 NaN%
PARAGON ASSOCIATES & PARAGON ASSOCIATES II JOINT VENTURE 1,050,000 $ 7,550,000 8.73% 10.85% 4 86,516 NaN%
EMANCIPATION MANAGEMENT LLC 683,422 $ 4,913,000 7.57% 6.95% 3 187,961 NaN%
HOLLOW BROOK WEALTH MANAGEMENT LLC 855,072 $ 6,148,000 3.63% 2.91% 10 489,875 NaN%

Then prices CONTINUED to decline as negative news and research reports came out reporting the known bad news of declining freight rates, over-supply of ships, economic uncertainty, etc.

Let’s set aside that on a normalized basis, I have a value for NVGS above $20, how do I know the price won’t go to $8 or $5 or $2? I don’t!   But I do have context to see if the price is “OVER” discounting the news/fundamentals.

http://seekingalpha.com/research/839737-j-mintzmyer/4912014-exclusive-research-navigator-holdings-cheap-underfollowed-deservedly is an example of several negative research reports that implied, “Yes, the stock is cheap with solid management and the company is profitable, BUT supply will increase next year.” Stay away.

Then for the next two months, September and October, the price chart showed a change in trend from rapidly down to sideways. Why was the price going sideways with negative reports and negative news constantly coming out each day?  Perhaps the chart was showing that prices had ALREADY discounted the known NEGATIVE news and extrapolating a long period of negative news.   Unless the news became much worse–despite frieght rates at 30 year lows–all you needed was slightly less bad news.

Sure enough, the announcement of earnings Nov. 4th 2016 showed that the company could still generate profits in an extremely negative operating environment. The price rallied confirming the prior discounting.  Now I could really start to add to my position.  The chart had helped me “eliminate” one side of the market–the downside.

The combination of fundamentals, the action of majority shareholders (holding firm), extreme negative news coupled with NON-DECLINING prices, gave me a signal that the market had ALREADY discounted negative news.    This is more of an art or combination of fundamentals, sentiment, and human incentives than just looking at chart patterns.

Hope that helps.

You are Hired! A Trump Playbook For Fixing Americas Economy

If you were against the New Deal and its wholesale buying of pauper votes, then you were against Christian charity.  If you were against the gross injustices and dishonesties of the Wagner Labor Act, then you were against labor.  If you were against packing the Supreme Court, then you were in favor of letting Wall Street do it.  If you are against using Dr. Quack’s cancer salve, then you are in favor of letting Uncle Julius die.  If you are against Holy Church, or Christian Science, then you are against god.  It is an old, old argument. –H.L.Mencken

The World of Inefficient Stock Markets

“Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive… Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one… Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome… Nations, like individuals, cannot become desperate gamblers with impunity. Punishment is sure to overtake them sooner or later.”

Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds, 1841

My prior post on Charts and Technical Analysis is here: http://csinvesting.org/2017/01/04/chartists-and-technical-analysis/

The point is to realize that charts are a tool but using them to predict is a fools’ game.   You can try to find disconfirming evidence,but make sure the sample size is a large one.   More on market inefficiency from Bob Haugen.

More Negative News; Hunter S. Thomson

Negative gold articles are piling up:https://mishtalk.com/2016/12/27/financial-times-barrons-tout-death-of-gold/

but note the sentiment extremems: http://www.acting-man.com/?p=48247

Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life

Hunter S Thompson

In April of 1958, Hunter S. Thompson was 22 years old when he wrote this letter to his friend Hume Logan in response to a request for life advice.

Thompson’s letter, found in Letters of Note, offers some of the most thoughtful and profound advice I’ve ever come across.

April 22, 1958
57 Perry Street
New York City

Dear Hume,

You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dangerous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal— to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.

I am not a fool, but I respect your sincerity in asking my advice. I ask you though, in listening to what I say, to remember that all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you specific advice, it would be too much like the blind leading the blind.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles … ” (Shakespeare)

And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect— between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.

But why not float if you have no goal? That is another question. It is unquestionably better to enjoy the floating than to swim in uncertainty. So how does a man find a goal? Not a castle in the stars, but a real and tangible thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock candy mountain,” the enticing sugar-candy goal that has little taste and no substance?

The answer— and, in a sense, the tragedy of life— is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway. It would take reams of paper to develop this subject to fulfillment. God only knows how many books have been written on “the meaning of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many people have pondered the subject. (I use the term “god only knows” purely as an expression.) There’s very little sense in my trying to give it up to you in the proverbial nutshell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qualifications for reducing the meaning of life to one or two paragraphs.

I’m going to steer clear of the word “existentialism,” but you might keep it in mind as a key of sorts. You might also try something called Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and another little thing called Existentialism: From Dostoyevsky to Sartre. These are merely suggestions. If you’re genuinely satisfied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleeping dogs lie.) But back to the answer. As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors— but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires— including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal), he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).

In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important. And it seems almost ridiculous to say that a man MUST function in a pattern of his own choosing; for to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life— the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

Naturally, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. You’ve lived a relatively narrow life, a vertical rather than a horizontal existence. So it isn’t any too difficult to understand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know— is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.

If I don’t call this to a halt, I’m going to find myself writing a book. I hope it’s not as confusing as it looks at first glance. Keep in mind, of course, that this is MY WAY of looking at things. I happen to think that it’s pretty generally applicable, but you may not. Each of us has to create our own credo— this merely happens to be mine.

If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my attention. I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that— no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.

And that’s it for now. Until I hear from you again, I remain,

your friend,
Hunter

Read more: https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/

Once you have found your purpose you MUST read this:

2016-Year-In-Review-PeakProsperity

For those who like to follow  Pabrai–from a recent missive:

While there are no guarantees, our portfolio (Pabrai Funds) is trading at one of the widest discounts to underlying intrinsic value. It is probably a good time to join. I enjoyed my recent chat with Barron’s Magazine:

http://www.barrons.com/articles/why-mohnish-pabrai-likes-gm-fiat-and-southwest-air

You might also enjoy viewing a talk I recently gave to the students at Peking University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo1XgDJCkh4

Personally, I think he is way over-rated as an investor-YOU can do better following YOUR own method.

“In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.” ~Tacitus

OVERCONFIDENCE

UBS trading floor above in 2008 and now in 2016

OVERCONFIDENCE