@brettgardner_10 This may be true but there are also multiple stories of people meeting him and coming away saying they met the best investor in the world.
Jordan Peterson on how to easily overcome social anxiety:
1. Social anxiety is not shyness. When you walk into a social situation, your brain registers it as a dominance hierarchy that is judging you. A negative judgment means low status. Low status interferes with everything your biology cares about. You are not being irrational. You are being evaluated by something that feels like nature itself, and your nervous system knows it.
2. Telling an anxious person to stop thinking about themselves does not work. You cannot tell someone to stop thinking about something. They get caught in the loop. Stop thinking about a white elephant. white elephant. white elephant. The instruction makes it worse. The only way out is to give the brain something else to do.
3. The actual solution is to look at other people. not glance. Genuinely look. Watch their face. Track what they are thinking. The moment you focus outward, your automatic social mechanisms engage, and the awkwardness dissolves on its own. You cannot be socially calibrated and self-focused at the same time. Attention can only go in one direction.
4. When speaking to a group, never try to address the group. It does not exist as a thing you can talk to. Find one person, look at them directly, and talk to that person. They will reflect the entire room back to you because everyone is entrained to the same social signal. If you can talk to one person, you can talk to anyone.
5. The eye at the top of the pyramid, the thing the Egyptians worshipped as Horus, is attention itself. What you pay attention to determines everything. The most important thing to look at is whatever your instincts flag as slightly wrong or off. That is where the real information is. Your enemies are useful for the same reason. They will tell you things about yourself that nobody else will, and occasionally one of those things will be accurate.
A perfectly triangular lake has three kingdoms along its three sides.
The first kingdom is rich and powerful, filled with wealthy, prosperous people.
The second kingdom is more humble, but still enjoys its fair share of wealth and influence.
The third kingdom is poor and struggling, with barely enough resources to maintain an army.
Eventually, the three kingdoms go to war over control of the lake, which has become a valuable resource.
The first kingdom sends 100 of its finest knights, clad in the best armor money can buy, each accompanied by a personal squire.
The second kingdom sends 50 knights, equipped with fine leather armor and supported by several dozen squires of their own.
The third kingdom can only send a single knight — an elderly warrior long past his prime — along with his faithful squire.
The night before the great battle, the knights of the first kingdom drink and celebrate late into the night.
The knights of the second kingdom aren’t quite as wealthy, but they still have enough grog to keep the festivities going well into the evening.
In the third camp, things are much quieter.
The squire takes a rope and throws it over the branch of a tall tree, making a noose. He hangs a cooking pot from it, fills it with stew, and shares a humble dinner with the old knight.
The next morning, disaster strikes.
The knights of the first two kingdoms are too hungover to fight.
The old knight from the third kingdom is simply too old and weary to rise from his bed.
So instead, the squires from all three kingdoms march into battle.
The fighting lasts all day and well into the night. When the dust finally settles, only one squire remains standing: the squire from the third kingdom.
And that just goes to show you that: The squire of the high pot and noose is equal to the sum of the squires of the other two sides.
I have read approximately 3,000 10-Ks in my life. I have read my wife’s emotional state correctly maybe 11 times. This is troubling because the skills should transfer. Both require you to look past the headline. Both require you to read the footnotes. Both require you to notice what was said last quarter that is not being said this quarter.
I can spot a goodwill impairment from 40 pages away. I cannot spot that my wife has been quietly furious since Tuesday. In a 10-K I notice when management changes the word “challenging” to “dynamic” and I correctly interpret this as a warning. In my marriage my wife changed the word “fine” to “fine.” and I did not notice the period. The period was the entire disclosure.
I missed it. I read a footnote last week in a packaging company’s annual report that disclosed a related-party transaction worth $400,000 and I caught it in 90 seconds. My wife told me three times this month that she was tired and I interpreted this as “tired” when in fact it was a Level 3 disclosure requiring immediate management response. I have a system for 10-Ks. I read the MD&A first, then the risk factors, then the cash flow statement, then the notes. I have no system for my wife. She is a company that does not file. She reports continuously and without warning and the format changes every quarter. Her risk factors are not enumerated.
Her MD&A is delivered through sighs of varying length and I have not yet developed the ear. Last week she said “do whatever you want” and I did whatever I wanted and it turns out the correct interpretation of “do whatever you want” was “do not do that specific thing” and I have no idea how I was supposed to know that, and yet, looking back, the signals were all there. The signals are always there. I have been trained to find signals. I find them in companies I will never meet. I miss them in the person I have lived with for nine years. My wife has started saying things like “you would notice this if I were a stock” and she is correct. She is correct. If she had a ticker I would have already built a 6,000-word model on her. I would know her seasonality.
I would know her capex cycle. I would know which quarters historically run hot. Instead I treat her like a private company and I am surprised every time the auditors arrive. I am going to bed now. She said good night in a tone. I do not know what the tone meant. I will find out in the morning. Or I will not. The 10-K of my marriage is filed in real time and I am, as always, three quarters behind.
There are currently 190,000 children in Chicago living below the poverty level.
For the price of the $900 million Obama library, we could have given each one of these poor children in Chicago $4,736.
Am I doing this right?
Why did I get divorced? Well, last week was my birthday. My wife didn’t wish me a happy birthday. My parents forgot, and so did my kids. I went to work, and even my colleagues didn’t wish me a happy birthday.
As I entered my office, my secretary said, “Happy birthday, boss!” I felt so special. She asked me out for lunch. After lunch, she invited me to her apartment.
We went there, and she said, “Do you mind if I go into the bedroom for a minute?” “Okay,” I said.
She came out five minutes later with a birthday cake, my wife, my parents, my kids, my friends, and my colleagues all yelling, “SURPRISE!!!” while I was waiting naked on the sofa.
@Molson_Hart “Outside of financial markets there really is no “compounding” as we know it”
This is so true. You might double or triple your bench press in 2-3 years but after that it may not even ever double again.
I guess the best way to compound is to keep learning new things.
@dstressedcos@pernasresearch Ignoring the Munger comment. Yes Bill Miller was big and early into Amazon and Bitcoin. Huge credit there. Also beat the S&P 15 straight years. If he retired then people would compare him to Lynch.
@At50w50882@inwoodcapital Yes. He’s a distressed investor and his last big hit was Lehman Bros. He also was keeping 30-40% in cash which wasn’t so bad when rates were 5-6% but a real drag with ZIRP. I’ll note Herb Wagner left to start Finepoint and also had a rough decade.
@other_st_nick I really want a comedy sketch where everyone who works at a company is an incompetent lazy idiot but anyone who tries to get a job there is subject to a ridiculously tough interview process that no one can pass.
Jerry: She has a penis?
George: She had a PENIS, Jerry!
Elaine: So what if she had a penis?
(Kramer enters)
Elaine: Kramer, would you ever date a girl with a penis?
Kramer: I only date girls with penises
George: Really? Why?
Kramer: She knows her way around the equipment