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Friday, October 20, 2017

Investment and Life Lessons - Part 11

Here's the PART 11 of our Investment and Life Lessons series. These are the ideas we've gathered from our various readings on business, stocks, economy, money, war, love and life. Our list is getting too long again hence we're sharing it with the Filipino Investors out there for them to learn a thing or two. Cheers!




  1. Be grateful for everything and entitled to nothing - Charles Koch
  2. After 25 years of buying and supervising a great variety of businesses, Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them. To the extent we have been successful, it is because we concentrated on identifying one-foot hurdles that we could step over rather than because we acquired any ability to clear seven-footers - Warren Buffett
  3. We've long felt that the only value of stock forecasters isto make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children - WB
  4. We never want to count on the kindness of strangers in order to meet tomorrow's obligations. When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night's sleep for the chance of extra profits - Warren Buffett
  5. The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don't have to swing at everything -- you can wait for your pitch. The problem when you're a money manager is that your fans keep yelling, 'Swing, you bum! - WB
  6. I call investing the greatest business in the world ... because you never have to swing. You stand at the plate, the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U.S. Steel at 39! and nobody calls a strike on you. There's no penalty except opportunity lost. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it - WB
  7. I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. ... It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty - WB
  8. I don’t let people do projections for me because I don’t like throwing up on the desk. ~Charlie Munger
  9. I have no use whatsoever for projections or forecasts. They create an illusion of apparent precision. The more meticulous they are, the more concerned you should be. ~Warren Buffett
  10. Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with great talent. Genius will not: unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent ~Calvin Coolidge
  11. Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.~Thomas Jefferson
  12. You don’t want to believe in luck, you want to believe in odds.~Charlie Munger
  13. Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.~Jim Rohn
  14. The future’s so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades
  15. We are each of us stronger than we think - Marcus Aurelius
  16. There was resolve in her eyes
  17. Envy is the tax that all distinction must pay - Ralph Emerson
  18. If you wanna get far you have to try and hide how powerful you really are - Ilacertus
  19. It takes great talent and skill to conceal one's great talent and skill - La Rochefoucauld
  20. Nothing is stable in the realm of power - Ilacertus
  21. What you become depends on how you spend your time - the billionaire and the beggar both have 24 hours everyday.
  22. Market predictions is the last refuge of the incompetent
  23. At some point the scarce resource is time, not the money
  24. Investors are always talking about Return on Assets, Return on Invested Capital. This is a Return on Life  - John Spears of Tweedy Browne, after buying an apartment big enough to fit his children and  grandchildren
  25. It’s remarkable how much you need to learn in order to realize how little you need to know
  26. If you can't control your emotions, all the data of the world can't save you - JOS
  27. Action without knowledge is foolish and knowledge without action is futile - JOS
  28. 60+% of quants violated their models
  29. Anyone who is anyone read Barrons
  30. We’ve met the enemy and it is us
  31. Brain: We must prepare for tomorrow night.
    Pinky: Why? What are we going to do tomorrow night?
    Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world!
  32. Being rich is having money. Being wealthy is having time.
  33. Tell me more. What happened next?
  34. In an ADHD world, patience is, unfortunately, in short supply. Advisors who face regular questioning from clients about quarterly investment returns know this all too well - Robert Johnson
  35. While the long-term is the only time frame that truly matters, we recognize that the long-term is not where life is lived. - Ritholtz Wealth
  36. Collaborate with the best people you possibly can. When you see a person, get to know a person, who seems like a great guy or a great gal to work with at something, try to find way to do it. Because that gives you some reach and some scope and it’s also fun to work with terrific people - Jim Simons
  37. If you’re like most people, you will spend most of your time in life tacitly presuming you’d live forever. Like watching a bad movie for the fourth time, bickering with your spouse, these things only make sense in light of eternity -  Sam Harris
  38. Everybody defamates from a mile away but face to face they haven't got a thing to say - Slipknot
  39. No one should be able to motivate you. You should be internally motivated to do well and the external motivators should be telling you to slow down if anything. People who are internally motivated have a problem of going too far - WSPB
  40. Would you rather be rich or have other people think you're rich.
    The masses choose the second. - WSPB
  41. I will predict in the future that people in the future will think that they can predict the future
  42. Successful active investors are patient and persistent
  43. What the public doesn't know is what makes them the public
  44. A gentleman’s best secrets are kept by his barber and his tailor, and those very men are secrets of the gentleman.
  45. The distinction has always been between ‘a man who is’ and ‘a man who does’. The latter is forced to take up industry to support himself; the former is someone who isn’t forced by any means to work.
  46. Golden rule of life:
    When you no longer need it you'll receive it.
    Applies to money, dating, friends etc.
    Reverse is also true.
  47. I remember the boy But I don't remember the feeling anymore. - Lea Salonga
  48. Just the phrase ‘investment banking fee’ is enough to put fear into any CFO’s heart
  49. You don't have to say something just because it’s true
  50. When I get stressed at something it’s usually because I’m not doing anything about it - Jeff Bezos
  51. Don’t rely on unreliable people - AAD
  52. I’ve learnt that I still have a lot to learn
  53. Aguerri - war hardened
  54. The main spur to Trade, or rather to Industry and Ingenuity, is the exorbitant Appetites of Men, which they will take pain to gratify
  55. You never see a motorcycle parked outside a psychiatrist’s office
  56. Few are willing and able to devote sufficient time and effort to become value investors, and only a fraction of those have the proper mindset to succeed. - Seth Klarman
  57. Indexing strategies designed to avoid significant under performance at the cost of assured mediocrity - Seth Klarman
  58. There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it and when he can - Mark Twain
  59. "But" a huge consoling stoic but - one must keep in mind that one will nevertheless be okay.
  60. Experience is what you got when you didn’t get what you wanted.— Howard Marks
  61. Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.— John Meynard Keynes
  62. Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.— Abraham Lincoln
  63. Better decisions free up your time and improve results
  64. People  subconsciously  are  trying  to  preserve  themselves  some  special  role  in  the universe - AI Effect
  65. The moral of the story is you get one life, so do it all - Bobby Axelrod
  66. It’s not greed that drives the world, but envy - WB
  67. Believing that you can catch bottoms and tops of the market is nothing but vanity - Gus Cosio
  68. If the story of your life doesn't change much over time, you'll be less likely to remember certain details. This is essentially why life flies by even if the days seem to last forever
  69. One cannot teach what one does not know - Elal Lasola
  70. It’s just you against you - Rommel Mampusti
  71. Let us remember and keep our faith that Sillimanians are people of goodwill and of good intentions - Ben S. Malayang III
  72. Absence of challenge, degrades the best of the best - N. Taleb
  73. It is a well-known trick that if you need something urgently done, give the task to the busiest (or second busiest) person in the office. Most humans manage to squander their free time, as free time makes them dysfunctional, lazy, and unmotivated—the busier they get, the more active they are at other tasks. - N. Taleb
  74. Psychologists have shown the irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you. - N. Taleb
  75. My son, I am very disappointed in you,” he said. “I never hear anything wrong said about you. You have proven yourself incapable of generating envy
  76. When you don’t have debt you don’t care about your reputation in economics circles—and somehow it is only when you don’t care about your reputation that you tend to have a good one. Just as in matters of seduction, people lend the most to those who need them the least.
  77. If you don’t do it, no one’s gonna do it for you - D. Rose
  78. Unfortunate Consequence of Hate: The unfortunate consequence of people with insecurity in any area of life… Is they will never fix their underlying issues. You’d be surprised to see the number of people in their 40s/50s with deep insecurity issues in certain areas (not well rounded). This could be dating, money, attention… anything. Essentially, they miss out on an enormous section of life and go through till the bitter end thinking that is “how life is” because it would kill their ego to know it wasn’t so. - WSP
  79. if someone can change your emotions… you’ve already lost because it means you value their opinion. If you really didn’t care you’d ignore it. - WSP
  80. It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent - Charlie Munger
  81. The essence of the philosophy is that we should live so that our happiness depends on as little as possible on external causes - Epictetus
  82. I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill. - Marcus Aurelius
  83. What good shall I do today? - Benjamin Franklin
  84. The computer is “only as good as the data it receives and the instructions it is given
  85. It’s the simple things in life that count: lashings of extra virgin olive oil; a Bialetti stovetop espresso maker; quality coffee beans; fresh, seasonal local produce; freshly baked bread; a fine bottle of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano (after all, In Vino Veritas, “There is truth in wine”); rest; and books.
  86. Adverse selection occurs when there information asymmetry before a deal is struck. Moral hazard occurs when there is information asymmetry after a deal is truck
  87. If you know HOW to think, it empowers you far beyond those who know WHAT to think.
  88. For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well. - JMK
  89. I’m tired of reading about the achievements of better men. - John Bradley
  90. An educated man is not, necessarily, one who has an abundance of general or specialized knowledge. An educated man is one who has so developed the faculties of his mind that he may acquire anything he wants, or its equivalent, without violating the rights of others. - Napoleon Hill
  91. Our happiness can never lie on anything outside of ourselves. A person's judgement of us is fleeting and holds no truth
  92. Value investing is not a concept that can be learned and applied gradually over time. It is either absorbed and adopted at once, or it is never truly learned. - Seth Klarman
  93. Being a value investor usually means standing apart from the crowd, challenging  conventional wisdom, and opposing the prevailing investment winds. It can be a very lonely undertaking. -Seth Klarman
  94. Those who can predict the future should participate fully, indeed on margin using borrowed money, when the market is about to rise and get out of the market before it declines. Unfortunately, many more investors claim the ability to foresee the market's direction than actually possess that ability. (I myself have not met a single one.) - Seth Klarman
  95. Investing is serious business, not  entertainment. If you participate in the financial markets at all, it  is crucial to do so as an investor, not as a speculator, and to be certain that you understand the difference - Seth Klarman
  96. We all know people who act responsibly and deliberately most of the time but go berserk when investing money. It may take them many months, even years, of hard work and disciplined saving to accumulate the  money but only a few minutes to invest it. - Klarman
  97. Stating that you want to earn, say, 15 percent a year, does not tell you a thing about how to achieve it. Investment returns are not a direct function of how long or hard you work or how much you wish to earn. A ditch digger can work an hour of overtime for extra pay, and a piece worker earns more the more he or she produces. An investor cannot decide to think harder or put in overtime in order to achieve a higher return
  98. Unsuccessful people make decisions based on their current situations. Successful people make decisions based on where they want to be
  99. There is no sphere of human thought in which it is easier to show superficial cleverness and appearance of superior wisdom than in discussing questions of currency and exchange.” - Sir Winston Churchill, September 28, 1949
  100. Despite extensive efforts on the part of analysts, to my knowledge, no model projecting directional movements in exchange rates is significantly superior to tossing a coin.” - Alan Greenspan, March 2, 2004

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