People who are curious are going to be better investors and better stewards of others’ money. If there’s no curiosity, you’re basically doing something that’s already been done by someone else.
Successive Approximations
A scientist has a healthy skepticism, suspended judgement, and disciplined imagination…the scientist explains the world by successive approximations.
Product Development
Ammunition and Barrels
Magnitude Beats Frequency
As an investor, success can be defined by how much you make when you are right, less how much you lose when you are wrong. This means how often you are right or wrong does not matter very much in the end. Magnitude beats frequency.
Everything Is Cyclical
I think it’s essential to remember that just about everything is cyclical. There’s little I’m certain of, but these things are true: Cycles always prevail eventually. Nothing goes in one direction forever. Trees don’t grow to the sky. Few things go to zero. And there’s little that’s as dangerous for investor health as insistence on extrapolating today’s events into the future.
Proving Them Wrong
Pointless
The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
Being Prepared
Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime. If you took our top 15 decisions out, we’d have a pretty average record.