My Liquorful Friday night rant. Tonight it was Captain and Coke, lots. Tomorrow I'm going to the Signature Room (Hancock Building, Chicago) for dinner, if anyone wants to go PM me.
Doesn't everyone, including you and I, get ripped off every 10 years or so? I can point to inflation and say we all get robbed every year, but there's some kind of scam, rip off, or bad deal that gets every single one of us, one way or another every 10 years or so. Credit bubbles, internet bubbles, gas prices, housing bubbles, "due date" changes on credit cards, shake outs of stock prices, gold prices, on and on and on. Even if you are a smart guy, you get sucked in somehow, someway. I got sucked in the last few months of the internet bubble and lost a chunk from the previous few years on a shitty shitty stock called UAXS. I had held out for so long before my final fateful implosion (20% of net worth gone).
I'm diggin Buffett more and more as I'm digging into investing. Pick your best idea and swing for the fences. Avoid investments you don't understand. I read in a Grenblatt or Buffett book something about interviewing retirees in Florida. Whomever was interviewing went around and asked the retirees what their compound investment rate was. One guy answered "who knows, enough for me to retire in Boca." So there's a greenlight to do something you know (Buffett) or index (Boca).
But even with indexing there are pitfalls, as the last 7 years got you crap for a return.
I read in the book Hedhogging something to the effet that a stock's price was 50% market, 30% sector and 20% market. I'm not that quick to watch markets to understand where I need to be. Who is going to be that sharp all of the time to get that right? Do you go to UBS and say, here, manage this? I've met a few wealth managers and hedge fund managers through my business. The ones that I met didn't have an angle. Monish Pabrai was the only guy that seemed like he could do OK with small caps, aside form that, I can index my own money, as that was basically what was being recommend to me.
So either Index or invest in things you can understand. Oh, and Kylie Minogue makes my pants tight. Seriously, I'm going to use all of my powers to meet her at some point. My wife will understand, or at least understand that she will have nothing to do with me.
youtube.com
/end rant, hope some if it made sense. |
