The 1 for 15 Slump
My son turns two today. He loves baseball and now knows he’s the same number as Derek Jeter. Hence, this Jeter-inspired post. Derek Jeter won one World Series title in his last 15 years in the league. Not many people think of him going 1 for his last 15. They remember the sheer dominance and […]
The Critical Component to Investing Performance
Most people believe IQ and cutting edge tactics account for superior investing performance. I think it’s the ability to control one’s emotions, especially in times of high stress and pressure. Sometimes this pressure is exogenous. Markets get crazy. Your biggest position reports very poor earnings. Your best trader leaves for another firm. More often than […]
The Coast is Never that Clear
Just when you think you’ve got the wind at your back and nothing can go wrong, the markets will likely deliver a healthy dose of reality. You can never get too comfortable in this game. Like the old Atari game Asteroids, it’s our job to move out of harms way and manage the damage. In […]
House Pallet Syndrome
[Originally written in 2014, edited in 2024] My fiancé, Marisa, and I visited two small wineries in Napa. We went expecting to taste good wine, but we ended up getting a heavy pour of wisdom from a couple owners of small producers. At small wineries, you can talk directly with the person calling the shots. […]
What Do You Want to Hear?
We all want results, but too many people want it the way they want it and not the way it has to be. We’re suckers for a good story. We want to believe and feel the hope. To protect yourself against enticing stories and sales pitches, one question I recommend asking is “how do you […]
Plant Many Seeds. Make Lots of Small Bets.
One seed = one opportunity Many seeds = many opportunities Farmers plant thousands of seeds because they don’t know which ones will produce food and which ones won’t. Production studios fund a lot of movies per year. Venture Capitalists make dozens of investments. Amazon doesn’t sell one genre of goods. They sell literally everything. When […]
Respecting Investors
The markets have a way of stirring up our unresolved issues. If you don’t have a means of addressing your anger, for example, in a healthy way then you’ll find yourself using the markets as the mechanism to get in touch with it. This is likely to serve as a very expensive life lesson. Everyone […]
What Would You Rather?
Would you rather get shot from 50 feet or 500 feet? Intuition says 500 feet, right? Well, mine does anyway. Knowing nothing about weaponry or the physics of bullet travel, my intu-wishin’ wants to believe that it would likely hurt less and do less damage when getting shot from a much further distance. But then […]
The Curse of Survival
A young lion is majestic. A pure power look that you’d frame on the wall. But the young ones don’t have the scars of survival yet. They haven’t been battle-tested. They haven’t had to protect their young or territory against a rival pride. They haven’t had to defend their kills against hyenas or compete for […]
Let’s Go Back to 2013
It’s January 2013 and the general feeling about the stock market is much less cocky than it is today. We’re 4-5 years removed from the Financial Crisis when stocks lost half of their value. Fear and cautiousness are still in the air — and this is after a ~90% rally off the March 2009 lows (using […]