Some investing wisdom

I haven't had much time to write lately, so I figured I would share some investing wisdom I have come across recently.


Matt Schifrin over at Forbes has written a great synopsis of the investing habits of some extraordianrily successful individual investors.

Jason Trennart raises and interesting argument that successful investing may require less of the technical tools taught in busineses schools and more of the social sciences contextual approach to problems, with the ability to synthesize data of various (and often qualitative) sorts.  Personally,  I believe this is true.  As an historian (undergrad) with an MBA, I can say that while financial skills are important (value is a financial concept), evaluating the risks around the estimate of value often require imprecise contextual thinking.  This is most true in evaluating the managers who hold investors assets in their hands.

Aelph suggests that buy and hold investing is neither dead nor a bad idea.  Admittedly, returns on equity do fall for most businesses over time as it gets harder to redeploy cash generated by the business in initiatives with the ROI of previous investments, but this is an argument for dividends, not an argument against buy and hold.

And a two-for-one: Aelph also has eight rules of investing.  I generally agree with them, though I think he puts too much emphasis on relative valuation, which is a strategy for long-only mutual funds and investment "professionals" who cannot afford to appear to be too passive (especially if the market is rising).  Personally, I believe a real advantage of the individual investor is the luxury of looking at absolute valuation, and mitigating risk by NOT INVESTING when there aren't attractive risk/return opportunities (e.g. US equities in 1999 and 2000).

Finally, I have to give Aelph huge credit for the diligence with which he posts.  I aspire to have that much to contribute.