School of Hard Knocks 02 (Jan 10 - Jan 13)

[profittaker]

may be I should start to practise that, sleep early and get up earlier while wife and kid are sleeping.

How to Be Dramatically More Productive, Successful, and Wealthy By Dr. Steve Sjuggerud
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
simply getting out of bed… but doing it an hour earlier than anyone else…

[winston]

Reading Fiction Will Make You a Better Investor

I know I’m not stupid. But even though I was always among the three brightest kids in class I have a good friend who, right brain or left brain, is quicker than me in every way.

He, in turn, tells a story about a visiting professor who was writing the answer to a question on a blackboard and was asked a second question, after which he wrote the answer to that with his left hand, while finishing the answer to the first with his right.

My buddy’s response was, “Well, I’m smart, but I’m nowhere near that gifted”.

The investing lesson here was that if I was just going to think linearly, along the same path as everyone else, someone with significantly higher brain horsepower was going to get there first, and potentially earlier enough to be filling my bid to take profits.

http://interloping.com/2011/12/14/readi ... -investor/

[winston]

TOL:-

If you watch as much CNBC and Bloomberg as me, you will know that there are quite a lot of clowns around.

These are the guys that can yap and yap, throw you facts and convincing arguments but end up totally off the mark ....

A few "hall of famers" come to mind:-
1) A few clowns calling for the parity of the Euro
2) Another few clowns calling for the abyss in 2009, right at the turn upwards
3) Some jokers giving you plenty of facts why gold is not a good investment
etc...

And if you have followed their advice, you may have gone bankrupt.

Need to remind myself:-
1. to always listen to both side of any argument
2. to always be alert, when everyone is saying the same thing
3. to keep in mind that if some of these clowns are that good, they dont have to get up at 5am, to appear on CNBC at 7am
4. that a good track record does not mean invincibility
5. not to confuse luck as skill

[winston]

10 Investment Lessons From 2011 By Eric Jackson

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- This is the time of year when we write articles with our predictions for what will happen next year. However, I think it's also important to look back and reflect what the past year has taught you.

With that in mind, here are my big lessons from the year gone by:


1. The conventional point of view is usually wrong or about to be wrong.

It takes time for a consensus point of view to emerge. If you watch enough business TV, you will likely realize when you've hit critical mass for a given idea.

In 2011, we had lots of conventional wisdom points of view. Once they became mainstream, they were usually about to be shown to be wrong.

Examples included: the economy is about to recover, QE3 is coming, the U.S. dollar is going to be shredded, and gold is the new currency.

Continue Below ..

[winston]

Continue ...


2. The market has become even more correlated -- which means it's more risky.

The first part of that statement is almost now conventional wisdom and there's nothing really insightful about it. It's really the second part of that which is important.

Because of the explosion in popularity of ETFs and leveraged ETFs, everything's linked. That doesn't matter in flat or up markets, but it could be deadly in a prolonged downturn.


3. Sugar-high government stimulus doesn't last forever. 2009 was great. 2010 was okay, but 2011 showed that governmental stimulus doesn't last forever.

This was that year we learned our economy had hit "stall speed" and it raised a number of questions as to what the next best steps would be.

[winston]

continue ...


4. In times of crisis, the U.S. dollar (and Swiss franc) is the safe asset -- not gold.

There were so many pundits claiming that Ben Bernanke had decided on a policy of deliberately weakening the dollar that it was an absolute two -foot gimme putt that the trade was to short the dollar through something like the UUP(UUP_).

That was a sign everyone was on one side of the boat and things were about to correct.


5. Deflation is still a bigger threat to the global economy than inflation.

For three years now, we've heard inflationistas rant and rave that we are just about to see prices explode and Ben Bernanke has been on their Most Wanted list.

Yet, it's been those wringing their hands about deflation that are still right.

[winston]

continue ...


6. Patents matter.

2011 was the year we realized that patents matter a whole lot. This was especially true in the mobile internet space as battles erupted between Apple(AAPL_), Google(GOOG_) and its Android partners, and Microsoft(MSFT_).

The war really ramped up after the battle for Nortel's trove of patents this summer, followed quickly by Google scooping up Motorola Mobility(MMI_) for $12 billion.

It's likely that patents will only play an increasingly offensive role going forward and not just in the mobile internet space. Watch what happens with the Facebook IPO.


7. Betting on a pain-in-the-ass management and board always takes longer than you think.

I have been long Yahoo!(YHOO_) since a year ago at this time. It has been a painful year for my "it's too cheap and value has to be unlocked at some point" thesis to play out.

I'm still hopeful that things will work out but it's been very trying hanging in there.

When you have a "doofus" board, it's tough to see your "fair value" fully realized.

[winston]

Continue ...


8. Something painful has happened to the middle class in America.

If you go into many malls this holiday season, you'll see lots of consumption going on. However, from the Occupy Wall Street protests this year to the countless 60 Minutes stories about empty houses and homelessness in America, we all know that something has tragically broken, affecting a number of middle class in America.

It's not clear if or when it can be fixed and where it will lead in the future, but 2011 is likely the year we'll look back on when it became clear that the problem was there and not going away.


9. The way Europeans handle a financial problem is different than the way Americans handle it.

It's still unclear whether the Europeans will be able to find themselves out this sovereign debt crisis but the differences in culture between how they are handling this problem and how Americans did in 2008 are striking.

Europeans desire much more time for discussion and debate. America also has much more financial flexibility to shift around money in response to a crisis.

[winston]

continue ...

10. We are all macro managers now.

Many traders have described 2011 to me as a "chopfest."

It's been a tough year for many. However, no matter what trading strategies, it's been a year where most have had to become macro managers, studying closely the machinations of European political leaders and the Federal Reserve.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11351686 ... L_btb_html

[winston]

Five Core Lessons

There are five core lessons I have learned over the course of my investing career that form the foundation of my annual surprise lists:

1. how wrong conventional wisdom can consistently be;

2. that uncertainty will persist;

3. to expect the unexpected;

4. that the occurrence of Black Swan events are growing in frequency; and

5. with rapidly changing conditions, investors can't change the direction of the wind, but we can adjust our sails (and our portfolios) in an attempt to reach our destination of good investment returns.

Source: Doug Kass, The Street