I recently spoke at IIM Lucknow. My topic was ‘Surviving the Investing Game.’
The 40th Lesson
I have a ritual of writing a note to myself on every birthday, and this is one of those for I complete forty years in my present state of existence on this Pale Blue Dot.
Life’s passing by too fast, or so it seems. I’m not usually one to make a big deal about my birthday, but as always, it has given me an opportunity to reflect.
“How in the world did that happen?” I asked my wife this morning as she woke me up from my slumber. It seems like yesterday I was twenty, just into college, and with no idea about where life was about to take me (still no idea!).
Alexa, How Can I Get Rich?
“Alexa, how can I get rich?” he asked staring at a speaker kept at a distance.
Nothing happened for a few seconds.
“Alexa! Alexa!” he shouted.
Nothing happened even then.
“Huh!” he blurted in frustration and went back to his playful ways.
This is a small conversation I heard of a 9-year old at our Camp Millionaire workshop in Mumbai on Sunday during a small break before we play musical chairs to explain kids the concept of demand and supply.
Well, the speaker on the other side of the intended conversation was not Alexa – virtual assistant developed by Amazon – but a plain one that operated on Bluetooth. But this 9-year old mistook it for one, and thus wanted to start a conversation to a get a quick response to his question. The question, however, sounded more like a command.
The Sixteen Silliest (and Most Dangerous) Things People Say About Stock Prices
The title of this post is inspired from Ch. 18 of Peter Lynch’s One Up on Wall Street, that reads – The Twelve Silliest (and Most Dangerous) Things People Say About Stock Prices.
For today, I have just added to and removed from Lynch’s list, and have illustrated the silliness using real-life examples of listed Indian stocks. None of what you see below portrays my view on any stock showcased in this post. These are purely examples, and that too from the benefit of hindsight. But they offer meaningful lessons.
Anyways, before you read ahead, please understand that I agree with what Morgan Housel wrote recently that people are not crazy in general. Just that they can…
…be misinformed. They can have incomplete information. They can be bad at math. They can be persuaded by rotten marketing. They can have no idea what they’re doing. They can misjudge the consequences of their actions.
I also agree with Charlie Munger who said that even smart people may have their ‘streaks of nuttiness’ that cause them to make occasional dumb remarks and decisions.
So, what follows below showcases just those moments of nuttiness and craziness that get a lot of people into problems in investing. I have experienced some of these moments myself, just that I have managed to survive to tell the tale. 🙂
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Siddhartha’s Dilemma, Marcus Aurelius On Honest Men, And Bezos on Amazon
Here’s some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…
Book I’m Reading – Siddhartha
Siddhartha is a beautiful novel by Hermann Hesse, first published in 1922 in Germany, that deals with the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha during the time of the Gautama Buddha.
The book follows this young man named Siddhartha on his journey to find the true meaning of life and peace. One passage that is particularly enlightening for me is when a ferryman, Vasudeva, the spiritual guide of Siddhartha, consoles him after the latter’s son (also Siddhartha) from a courtesan woman (Kamala) doesn’t seem to be interested in reciprocating well to his father’s love and advice, and seems like running away to a path of his own that looks dangerous to his father –
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