Investment and Life Lessons - Part 5

Here's the part 5 of my previous posts regarding the lessons/quotes I've encountered in my various readings on business, stocks, economy, money, war and life. My list is getting too long again hence I'm sharing it with the Filipino Investors out there for them to learn a thing or two. Cheers!

1. Be like a duck, stay calm on the surface but paddle like hell underneath
2. The few who do are the envy of the many who watch - J.R.
3. Don't wish it was easier, wish you were better - J.R.
4. You have to fight through some bad days to earn the best ones. - Elal Jane Lasola
5. Wall Street's tendency to be forgiving of bullish strategists who end up being wrong..  "If you're a bull and you're wrong, you're forgiven. If you're a bull and you're right, they love you. If you're a bear and you're right, you're respected. If you're a bear and you're wrong, you're fired."
6. To understand is to be free - Baruch Spinoza
7. A thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many - Baruch Spinoza
8. Desire is the very essence of man - Spinoza
9. Warren chooses the kind of business he would like to be in and then lets the price of the security, and thus his expected return, determine the buy decision. (This is like Warren in high school identifying a girl he wants to date and then waiting for her to break up with her boyfriend before beginning his pursuit).
10. Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike - Benjamin Graham
11. There is no such thing as overnight success or easy money. If you fail, do not be discouraged; try again. When you do well, do not change your ways. Success is not just good luck: it is a combination of hard work, good credit standing, opportunity, readiness and timing. Success will not last if you do not take care of it. - Henry Sy
12. Work more, talk less - Henry Sy
    
13. The more things change  the more they remain the same
14. Well, life all comes down to a few moments, this is one of'em - Bud Fox
15. There is no nobility in poverty anymore dad - Bud Fox
16. You're on a roll kid, enjoy it while it lasts, coz it never does - Bud Fox's boss in brokerage firm
17. Blowing up would mean returning to the tedium of the university or the non trading life
18. I start with the platitude that one cannot judge a performance in any given field (war, politics, medicine, investments) by the results, but by the costs of the alternative (i.e., if history played out in a different way). Such substitute courses of events are called alternative histories. Clearly, the quality of a decision cannot be solely judged based on its outcome, but such a point seems to be voiced only by people who fail (those who succeed attribute their success to the quality of their decision).
19. There's absolutely no excuse for working towards your goal everyday
20. Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost
21. As in a biblical cycle, it took seven years to make John a hero and just seven days to make him a failure. When will John recover from the ordeal? Probably never. The reason is not because John lost money. Losing money is something good traders are accustomed to. It is because he blew up; he lost more than he planned to lose. His personal confidence was wiped out. But there is another reason why John may never recover. The reason is that John was never skilled in the first place. He is one of those people who happened to be there when it all happened. He may have looked the part but there are plenty of people who look the part. - Fooled by randomness
22. Following the incident, John regarded himself “ruined”; yet his net worth is still close to $ 1 million, which could be the envy of more than 99.9% of the inhabitants of our planet. Yet there is a difference between a wealth level reached from above and a wealth reached from below. The road from $ 16 million to $ 1 million is not as pleasant as the one from 0 to $ 1 million. - Fooled by randomness
23. Rhetoric - language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content
24. Rare events exist precisely because they are unexpected.
25. Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. - Warren Buffett
26. If you’re tired of starting over, stop giving up
27. Generally, you should never forget what a person says to you when angry because that's when the truth finally comes out.
28. No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion
29. An open society is one in which no permanent truth is held to exist; this would allow counter-ideas to emerge
30. The philosopher Pascal proclaimed that the optimal strategy for humans is to believe in the existence of God. For if God exists, then the believer would be rewarded. If he does not exist, the believer would have nothing to lose. Accordingly, we need to accept the asymmetry in knowledge; there are situations in which using statistics and econometrics can be useful. But I do not want my life to depend on it. Like Pascal, I will therefore state the following argument. If the science of statistics can benefit me in anything, I will use it. If it poses a threat, then I will not. I want to take the best of what the past can give me without its dangers. Accordingly, I will use statistics and inductive methods to make aggressive bets, but I will not use them to manage my risks and exposure. - Fooled by randomness
31. It is traders and investors alike by their own behavior and assumptions who makes stock ownership risky
32. We have a long way to go, but we are on the way
33. Buffett did make thousands of decisions of not to invest.  Those who study Buffett intensely know that he works extreme hard and study all companies available from A to Z, leaving no stone unturned.  Deciding not to buy is just as important as deciding to buy.  However, inactivity is commonly misunderstood for not making any decision
34. Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts - Albert Einstein
35. No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude - Karl Popper
36. Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell
37. Ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it - Karl Popper
38. You get rich, move to rich neighborhoods, then become poor again - FBR
39. Remember that nobody accepts randomness in his own success, only his failure - FBR
40. Consider that all one needs is two bad years in the investment industry to terminate a risk-taking career - FBR
41. Life is too short to worry about the little things. Enjoy what you have today, not what you might get tomorrow.
42. The chief patient I am preoccupied with is myself -  Sigmund Freud
43. Patience is not the ability to wait but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting - Joyce Meyer
44. Patience is the ability to count down before you blast off
45. Create the highest grandest vision for your life because you become what you believe - Oprah
46. It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor - Seneca
47. The man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest - Henry David Thoreau
48. When a fellow says it ain’t the money but the principle of the thing, it’s the money - Artemus Ward
49. If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money - Simone Weil
50. Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one - Benjamin Franklin
51. Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are -
    James W. Frick
52. If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability - Henry Ford
53. Buy when everyone else is selling and hold until everyone else is buying. That’s not just a catchy slogan. It’s the very essence of successful investing - J. Paul Getty
54. When is an agreement to you? - AAD
55. Advertising has us buying cars and clothes - Tyler Durden
56. Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves - Steve Jobs
57. If a problem can be solved, then it’s not worth worrying about it. If it can’t be solved, then it’s useless to worry about it - Japanese wisdom
58. Do not hold back that which is departing; do not chase away that which is arriving - Japanese wisdom
59. Beautiful flowers do not bear good fruit - Japanese wisdom
60. Either you run the day or the day runs you - Jim Rohn
61. The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage - Warren Buffett
62. A lion does not concern himself with the ideas of a sheep
63. Don’t look back, you’re not going that way - Wise Man
64. There are no solutions, only trade offs - Thomas Howell
65. It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, if it catches mice, it’s a good cat. - Deng Xiaoping
66. Economics is the study of people and choices
67. Theories tell you what something is, models merely tell you what something is more or less like - Emanuel Derman
68. Models are metaphors, graven images of reality but not reality itself - Emanuel Derman
69. Correlation does not imply causation
70. Big data is useful, but it is not a replacement for the classic ways of understanding the world
71. Data has no voice. You still need a model, a theory, or intuition to find a cause.
72. A hedge is a collection of securities that aim to protect another collection of securities against change in value - JPM
73. It is abnormal for a christian not to have an appetite for the impossible - Bill Johnson
74. Success is not owned it is rented and it’s due everyday
75. The goal of learning economics is becoming a better decision maker
76. Macroeconomics is relatively new subject, it wasn't until the great depression (1929)
77. Never complain, never explain - Jim Rohn
78. Most people spend the first half of their lives saying they are too young, and the second half saying they're too old. The time is now, and there is no tomorrow for champions
79. Investors want to believe in someone. Forecasters want to earn a living. One of those groups is going to be disappointed. I think you know which.
80. In some parts of the world, if you said, “my daddy runs a hedge fund”, I say, “what’s a hedge fund?” In Greenwich, Connecticut, the kids say “what kind of hedge fund does your daddy run?” - Cliff Asness
81. Speak the truth, but leave immediately after - Slovenian Proverb
82. The beginning of all things are small - Cicero
83. While there is life, there is hope - Cicero
84. Swim as competently as you can - Charlie Munger
85. Every mischance in life is an opportunity to behave well and learn something. And that your duty in life is not to submerge in self pity but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive passion - Epictetus
86. First say to yourself what you would be; and the do what you have to do - Epictetus
87. Amor Fati - Love fate or love what happens to us
88. Poor thinking habits make poor people poor - Jim Rohn
89. We are affected on how we think things are, not they way they are - Jim Rohn
90. The mind can only absorb so much what the sit can endure - Jim Rohn
91. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit - Aristotle
92. People tend to look at the past with rose colored glasses - CM
93. You don’t get what you deserve in life, only what you negotiated - CM
94. The world should be lived as it is not as it should be - Niccolo Machiavelli
95. The world does not belong to the pessimist - Warren Buffett
96. Buy low and sell very very high
97. When you speak, you are only repeating what you already know, when you listen you might learn something new - Dalai Lama
98. I don’t know - Dalai Lama
99. Value, momentum, quality, low risk investing work in my opinion in kind of a sweet spot - good enough to be really important if you could follow them with discipline, not so good enough that the world looks at it and goes this is easy, they are excruciating at times and I hate those times but I recognize intellectually you need those times while I whine and cry during those times - Cliff Asness
100. Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.  – Rafiki, The Lion King