저자: The Financial Economics · 외국인
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most people get excited the better things go they feel better about stocks the higher the prices they tend to buy more when the prices are at high levels and then when it turns down they get depressed and they get sad and they Ru the day they ever bought a stock and they tend to sell at low prices n you must invest differently from the herd you must invest idiosyncratically idiosyncratic positions are uncomfortable ever identified an asset that was overpriced and got out to only to it go down the next day overpriced assets become more overpriced and you have to be able to live with that and it's uncomfortable you you you you prompted me to think a little bit about your notion of being aggressive or defensive uh in different kinds of Market situations you you talk about that as something you that that that governs a lot of how could you explain a little bit well I I really think that the most important single decision for what call the medium term in investing is whether it to be more aggressive or more defensive at a point in time now I'm not talking about the short term like the next day week or month and I'm not talking about the long term like 30 years when you can ignore the interim fluctuations I'm talking about two three five years if you're positioning your portfolio today for the next three years I think the most important question is whether it should be an aggressive portfolio or defensive portfolio and it's not stocks versus bonds high quality versus low quality grow stocks versus value stocks US Stocks versus foreign stocks uh developed World stocks versus emerging stocks large companies versus small the most important question is offense or defense if you have an aggressive portfolio in a period when the offense was called for you'll get chewed up and it doesn't matter how you answered all those other questions and if you have a an an an aggressive portfolio at a time when it turns out that aggressiveness was propitious it doesn't matter how you answer those questions either you'll be successful so I really believe that that's the key let me talk about it in another Direction now I believe that every investor myself included every day faces two risks I call them the twin risks what are they the first one is obvious it's the risk of losing money the second one is a little more subtle it's the risk of missing opportunities and we have to confront these every day now if you say to me I want to be absolutely sure that I don't lose any money then I'll I'll say okay we'll put you all in t bills you can't lose any money but you miss every opportunity if you say I want to be 100% sure I don't miss any of the opportunities then I say okay no T bills for you we and put you all in Risk assets and you will be 100% exposed to the risk of losing money so you can eliminate one but it puts you firmly in the crosshairs of the other or you can compromise on the two and most people what do they say well I don't want you know I uh uh I I don't want to lose any money but on the other hand I don't want to miss all the opportunities so I'm going to do some of each I'm going to balance aggressiveness and defensiveness I'm going to balance worrying about avoiding losing money and worrying about missing opportunities and that's the right thing to do all one or all the other makes absolutely no sense okay manage the two risks balance them in What proportion that's the next question so the way I think about this proposition so in July of of 17 I wrote a memo advising some caution and some guy on TV says that's it Howard Mark says it's time to get out and when I when I ran into him the next time I said there's only two things I would never say get out and it's time because I don't I am never that certain and the investment world does not permit that level of uncertainty it's not black or white and when you go on on on the TV shows as I do sometimes they want you to say buy or sell in or out but it's not black or white it's a it's how you balance and the way I think about it is there's a speedometer like on the dashboard of your car and it goes from zero to 100 and zero is all cash and a 100 is fully invested in Risky Securities and perhaps using margin or leverage and the question is where should you be in between now if you want to invest and most people say I want to make some money so I'm going to invest and they they try to think about whether they should buy apple or Amazon but they missed the step the first step that everybody who considers investing should take is to say from zero to 100 who am I given my age my financial position my income my requirements my dependence my psyche sh where should I normally be if you're young if you have a great career ahead if you're making more money than you need if you have no dependence and you have and if you make a mistake in investing you have decades more to make it right right then you can be an 80 or a 90 if you're approaching retirement and you have a uh dependent spouse and you're not going to be uh earning your income anymore from your job and if you are concerned about your ability to live with the E the emotional impact of fluctuations then you might be a 30 so every person should perform serious introspection and figure out where they should be and the emotional content is extremely important because the one thing you can't do in investing is you can't do the right thing if if if you can't stand the pain and everything that happens emotionally conspires to make us make mistakes most people get excited the better things go they feel better about stocks the higher the prices they tend to buy more when the prices are at high levels and then when it turns down they get depressed and they get sad and they Ru the day they ever bought a stock and they tend to sell at low prices that's what most people do how can we tell that that's what most people do because stocks go up and when they get too high then they come down and most people are buying up here that's what puts them up here and they're selling down here that's what puts them down here so emotion Works to our destruction you must figure out whether you can live with the emotional ups and downs and if you can't you know there are things you can do you can turn your money over to other people to manage you can there are ways to put your in you're investing on autopilot anyway background so you there's a speedometer it goes from Z to 100 each one in in the audience should figure out normally where they should be and let's say I conclude that I'm a 75 next question where should I be today should my portfolio be riskier than my normal portfolio because I think there are great times ahead and and prices are low and psychology is depressed and I think it's a propitious time to add risk or should I have less risk than normal because I think prices are high and optimism is every place and Euphoria and and uh uh and and the the pendulum of psychology is probably going to swing back towards the midpoint so I think it's extremely important to figure out where we are in the cycle and consequently where we should be positioning our portfolio riskwise relative to our normal position well that sounds like a lot of discipline Howard to well you ask most people to do I mean they want to follow the herd don't they well they want to follow the herd but the herd is usually wrong yeah and and in investing there's something called contrarian behavior and all the great investors are by definition contrarian in order to have a great investment result what do you have to do you have to buy when everybody else is selling and prices are low you have to get out when everybody's buying and prices are high you have to avoid the things that everybody loves and has bit up and you have to buy the things that everybody hates and and have permitted to drop like a stone you have to do the opposite but it's not easy be and Dave Swenson who runs the endowment at Yale which is I think the best performing Endowment in the country over the last 30 3 years that he's been there has a says in his book that Superior investing requires the adoption of uncomfortably idiosyncratic positions and those two words are fabulous because if you want to be a superior investor even if you want to avoid the these horrible mistakes that I describe by definition you must invest differently from the herd you must invest idiosyncratically but by definition idiosyncratic positions are uncomfortable why because the Market's going like this every stock is getting more valuable every day you say it's overprice you get out it continues higher everybody else is making money telling you what an idiot you are to get out and you know there's a book about Bubbles and crashes by Charles kindleberger he says there is nothing worse for your dis for your equilibrium that to watch a friend get rich that's human nature and so and and and by the way so you get out of something nobody ever identified an asset that was overpriced and got out to only to see it go down the next day it overpriced assets general rule overpriced assets become more overpriced and you have to be able to live with that and it's uncomfortable and there's an old saying in our business that being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong but you have to live with that because there is no alternative m
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