Basics of being in the market – really good article. Courtesy of Howard Lindzon.
Making Contact…Staying in The Game…Keeping it Simple
If a broker with a Russian Accent , calls you from a Swiss Bank, In Manhattan….don’t buy auction rate securities disguised as AAA securities . At what point in that pitch would you NOT become alarmed. Sure these brokers are liars and thieves, but the Yutz’s that are managing corporate cash just can’t be this dumb. In fact they are not. They are f@#$king negligent as well. So is the CEO that hired them to manage hard to earn profits and cash.
There is no substitute for cash, in fact….with your cash chase LOWER yields for MORE guarantees.
If it ain’t IN CASH, consider it an investment and a dollar amount you COULD lose. If it ain’t IN CASH, you are swinging for the fences, there is no in between. It’s a lie, wrapped up in a trending bull market theme of the day.
Don’t be weak and pathetic people…think. Don’t chase returns, respect the difficulty of investing.
I like neat packages. When I was a kid, I would always be arranging my closets and desk and neatening things up as my mom would tell you in a first encounter.
I am the same way with my portfolio. I think I have survived and grown my investing business so far because I am constantly fidgeting and tinkering around the edges. IF you keep pruning, an Apple, Baidu, Chipotles or Crox shows up and if you are consistently IN the market…they all come at once and you get some outperformance years. Those looking for the linear returns are lying to themselves and their investors.
Fred had a recent post that was interesting and encouraging and correct all at once :
Some will read this and suggest that our business is all about swinging for the fences. But I don’t think so. There are hitters in baseball, the best hitters in fact, that hit balls out of the park when they are just trying to make good contact. That’s how you have to do it in the venture business. You try to make 20 great investments and you work with them closely in hopes that four years in you have six or seven that have home run potential, and after ten years, you maybe hit one or two out of the park. If you try to hit every one out of the park day one, you’ll strike out way too much and the fund won’t work out very well.
Investing is such an awesome FREEDOM, often abused, almost always misinterpreted (scam, short-term, noise) and most of the time a neglected option that every American has.
There are now ZERO barriers to entry with discount brokers and commoditized information. We all are able to see the prices at the same time. That’s what this blog has been hammering home for years.
What a shame most people don’t do it at all or make the same mistakes over and over.
