[The Weekend Bulletin] #169: The Animal In You, Smart But Stupid, ChatGPT for Research, 10 Pillars of Investing,...
...Two Value Investors, Modern Time Management, Outlier Success, and more.
A digest of some interesting reading material from around the world-wide-web. Your weekly dose of multi-disciplinary reading.
Investing Wisdom
In this 2006 lecture in Bruce Greenwald's class at Columbia Business School, famed investor Li Lu, delivers his investment philosophy through case studies. He explains how value investors are a small minority working in the market that is designed to work against them. He also advocates developing a journalistic streak in order to becomes a successful value investor, as well as allocating 'shit-load' of capital to an investment after having done the work. This is a mini masterclass in value investing. You can also read a crisp summary here.
Another value investor with an envious track record of managing public money - Joel Tillinghast (manager of Fidelity Low-Priced Stock, has beaten the S&P 500's 9% annual return since 1989 with an annualized total return of 13%) - lays down his thought process in this short interview.
Curious about the use of AI in fundamental research, the author of this post used ChatGPT to carry out fundamental analysis of a company. The article details how the author carried out the analysis, the prompts that he used, and the responses that he received. It then summarises all that AI is good at currently, as well as it's shortcoming. Finally, it concludes with some time-saving use cases of AI in researching on a company.
Bring out the animal in you - not in the bad sense, but in the good sense. This dated article lists 10 animals and their key characteristics that could make you a better investor. A handy list.
This article distills the learnings from all of Nick Sleep's letters in to 10 rules that helped him crush the market.
Mental Models & Behavioral Biases
This article makes an interesting distinction between rationality and intelligence. It quotes a few studies that have not only shown that the two are different, but also that there could be an inverse correlation between the two. The author claims that rationality is not about intelligence but about character, and lists two character traits that one should seek in order to be more rational.
Personal Development
The irony of our perspective on time is quite interesting - on the one hand we believe that time is abundant, while on the other we constantly complain about how we dont have enough time. The subject of time management and our struggle with it is as old as history itself (Seneca's On The Shortness of Life being the most famous, written more than 2000 years ago, definitely not our first meditation on the subject). However, the speaker of this Ted talk believes that modern problems need a modern solution. While all of time management talks about avoiding distractions, it may be difficult to do so in today's age given how integral smartphones are in our lives. He offers some unique solutions like managing people, rather than managing time, ruling social media rather than avoiding it, rewarding oneself, and embracing failure. The author establishes his credibility in managing time at the beginning of the talk:
"...by passion i am a teacher that is the core soul and heart of what i do i love teaching and that's what i do day in and day out, but apart from this i do a few more stuff. So far, I have recorded over 100 courses - each of the course contains around 100 videos give or take. Apart from that i also run a Youtube channel which is constantly growing, around 700 000 subscribers. I'm insanely active on Instagram, i love to just be on Instagram day in and day out. Apart from that, I run four startups, in one of them I am CTO currently and apart from this i am founder of other three. I am also a traveler - so far 31 countries, after that 2022 happened and stuff you know. Not only that, I also dedicate around four hours in a week to my health - running, gymming, whatever that is...."
Sam Altman, the current CEO of OpenAI (ChatGPT, Dall-E), has observed many a successes and failures in the startup world by being an entrepreneur himself (from the age of 19) as well as the president of Y-combinator. In a short blog post, he distills his years of experience in to 13 key observations that he believes would help anyone to achieve outlier success.
Blast From The Past
Revisiting articles from a past issue for the benefits of refreshing memory and spaced repetition, as well as for a fresh perspective. Below are articles from #93:
Arnold Van Den Berg (whom we met in #91) talks about the struggles of his life and how he used the power of belief to overcome them (he also talks about investing, but the power of belief is what stuck with me) in a recent podcast. AVDB has been a student of the power of the sub-conscious mind for decades, and he lays down a simple, self-tested, exercise that we can all practice in order to become better at our endeavours. His success at using this method should encourage you to try it out.
Nick Maggiulli explores Why Buying the Dip is a Terrible Investment Strategy (#83 had other articles in this series listed)
Ho Nam argues that investing is neither a bet on markets or a bet on people.
Quotable Quotes
"Successful microcap investing isn’t about being right all the time; it’s more about the ability to identify when you are wrong quicker. Most of the stocks you own today you will end up selling."
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"The ability to quickly acknowledge, accept, sell, and forget when you are wrong on an investment is a superpower."
- Ian Cassel
"An early mentor of mine used to say, "If you want to achieve anything in this life all you need is a clock on the leaning tower of Pisa" - the time and the inclination."
- Laurence Endersen
(Pebbles of Perception)
"A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships."
- Helen Keller
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That's it for this weekend folks.
Have a wonderful week ahead!!
- Tejas Gutka
[Aug 26, 2023]