Thoughtful investment memos from William Digby. A periodic snapshot of what happened, what may happen, or other interesting marketplace musings for intelligent investors globally. Weekly, since 2012.
The egoist does not tolerate egoism.
As your island of knowledge grows, so does the shoreline of ignorance.
No profit in comfort.
These great market dislocations are where fortunes are made and lost – and where investors genuinely prove their mettle.
Confusing motion for progress.
The irony is that we achieve far more in the long run when we have slack. We are more productive when we don’t try to be productive all the time.
The business of decisions.
To be in the investment business is to be in the business of decisions.
Be rare and valuable.
If you want something that’s both rare and valuable - a great job that earns you millions of dollars - you need something rare and valuable to trade in return.
Increasing returns. Wrecking the greater part of economic theory.
Steadily, continuously, and with increasing rapidity: economies have undergone a transformation. From bulk-material manufacturing, to design and use of technology.
Forget your passion; follow your talent.
Successful people tend to seed young minds to follow their passion and not focus on money. This is nonsense.
Why we fall for fallacy.
Kim Jong-Il wrote 1,500 books and six operas during his three years at Kim Il Sung University. Apparently.
Accumulative advantage: why a few people get more of the rewards in life.
Small differences in performance can lead to very unequal distributions when repeated over time.
Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.
Great thinkers, icons, and innovators think forward and backward. They drive their brain in reverse.
Highly boring, highly complex. The best place to find investments.
Many great investments are found at the nexus of businesses that are highly boring and highly complex—a disproportionate number of great investments in-fact.
There is more to poker than life.
Games are neat; life is messy. But both are played with incomplete information.
Excesses lead to greed; greed leads to euphoria; euphoria leads to losses.
Each new financial crisis brings with it scar tissue and near-death experiences for many investors. But lessons are not always learned. Not all crises are remembered equally.
The investor's mind; here be monsters.
People who are correct a lot of the time, are people who often change their mind.
Study Failure, not Greatness.
Success is idiosyncratic. Investing especially so. Finding good investments - good management teams, good entrepreneurs - is finding good fit for style.