Welcome to my Reflections on Investing.
“Why are great investors so highly lauded? What makes them great? Can anyone become great?”
Simple questions sparked my interest; complex answers solidified my passion.
I am completely fascinated by the intellectual and emotional challenge of investing. The discipline offers an unparalleled opportunity to learn about businesses, society, markets, human behavior, psychology, and decision-making, to name a few. Ample wisdom can be gleaned from great investors, yet the most important things can be learned but cannot be taught.
The purposes of this blog are to document and share my thoughts, refine my thought process, and assess the level of conviction in my ideas. Putting in the work required to have an opinion is difficult, let alone having the courage and ability to change your perspective when presented with new information. Furthermore, one’s inner dialogue may seem coherent until figurative pen is put to paper. Writing not only helps reveal perspectives you subconsciously possess but have never fully articulated, but also illuminates inconsistencies that gut feelings conceal. Lastly, public declarations influence behavior, hopefully for the better, and are immutable, so it’s less easy to fool yourself.
The game of investing is as much an internal competition as an external one. While the external scoreboard is important, the internal scoreboard is much more significant. The end goal is obviously to accumulate wealth. But participating purely for the objective is an uphill battle. Loving the process is vital since the decisive judgments occur in the trenches. Clearly, like many other games, investing is a combination of skill and luck, and while emphasis is rightfully placed on the former, far too little attention is paid to the latter. Mistaking luck as skill in favorable outcomes and vice versa in unfavorable ones is human nature, but can be costly in the long run.
Because time is arguably the most precious resource we have, I don’t want to waste the reader’s time, nor mine, writing about expiring information. The true advantages result from compounding long-term knowledge through relentless curiosity, evaluation, and intellectual honesty. Though it is valuable to embrace the best of what others have already figured out, it is equally important to not blindly accept what others proclaim as truth because it coincides with your worldview. Far too often I observe that context and nuance are overlooked, whether purposefully or unintentionally, which hinders one’s ability to accurately assess a complex reality and leads to misguided reasoning and sub-optimal decisions.
That being said, I don’t have all the answers and I am more than willing to say, “I don’t know,” which is ironically the correct response in most instances. The investment management career is a continuous learning experience, and as an aspiring active manager, I’m excited to document my journey.
I hope my posts provide some valuable insights for you, as well as my future self.
Thanks for reading!
Reflections on Investing 