저자: The Financial Economics · 외국인
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surviving the jungle uh you know the lion shows up uh you know you and everyone starts running you run with them that does not work well uh in markets in fact you generally have to do the opposite people tend to get excited about investments when stocks are going up and they get depressed when they're going down and that I think that's just inherently human you have to reverse that you have to get excited when things get cheaper and you got to get concerned when things get more expensive never invest money you can't afford to lose where it would if you lost this this money and you know, you lose your house, you're investing money that you don't care about the price in the short term.
It's money for your retirement and you take a really long-term view. It's key. Most of what I've learned in the investment business, I learned from Warren Buffett. He's been my great professor uh of this business. I my first book I read in the business was the Ben Graham intelligent investor. But fairly quickly, you get to learn about Warren Buffett and I started by reading the Bergkshire Hathway annual reports.
Uh and then I eventually got the Buffett partnership letters. So you can see uh which are an amazing read to go back to the 19 mid1 1950s and read what he wrote to his limited partners when he first started out and just follow that trajectory over a long period of time. So what's remarkable about him is one duration right he's still at it at 93 uh you know two uh you know takes a very long-term view um but a big thing that you learn from him investing requires this incredible dispassionate uh unemotional quality you have to be extremely economically rational uh which is not uh a basic it's not something you learn in the jungle you know I don't think it's something that you know if you think about the the um the you know surviving the jungle uh you know the lion shows up uh you know you and everyone starts running you run with them uh that does not work well uh in markets in fact you generally have to do the opposite right when the lemmings are running over the cliff that's the time where you're facing the other direction and you're running the other direction i.e.
stepping in, you're buying stocks at really low prices. Um, you know, Buff has been great at that and great at teaching about what he calls temperament, which is this sort of emotional kind of or unemotional uh quality that you need uh to be able to dispassionately look at the world and say, "Okay, is this a real risk?
Are people overreacting?" Um, people tend to get excited about investments when stocks are going up and they get depressed when they're going down. And that I think that's just inherently human. You have to reverse that. You have to get excited when things get cheaper and you got to get concerned when things get more expensive.
You've been a part of some big battles, some big losses, some big wins. So, it's been a roller coaster. Mhm. So, in terms of temperament psychologically, how do you not let that break you? How do you maintain a calm uh demeanor and avoid running with the lemmings? I think it's something you kind of learn over time.
Uh, a key success factor is you want to have enough money in the bank that you're going to survive. Uh, you know, regardless of what's going on with volatility in markets, you know, people who uh, one, you shouldn't borrow money. So, if you borrow money, you own stocks on margin, markets are going down and you have your livelihood at risk, it's very difficult to be rational.
So key is getting yourself to a place where you're financially secure. You're not going to lose your house, right? That's a kind of a key thing. And then also doing your homework. You know, stock prices, stocks can trade at any price in the short term. And if you know what a business is worth and you understand the management, you know it extremely well, it's not nearly as uh it doesn't bother you when a stock price goes down or it has much less impact on you because you know, you know, again, as uh Mr.
Graham said, you know, in the short term the market's a voting machine. You have a bunch of lemmings voting one direction, that's concerning. But if it's a great business, doesn't have a lot of debt and people going to just listen to more music next year than this year, you know, you're going to do well.
Uh so it's a bit some combination of being personally secure and also just knowing what you own uh and over time you build uh uh calluses I would say. So psychologically, just as a human being, speaking of lines and gazels and all this kind of stuff, is there some is it as simple as just being financially secure, uh is there some just human qualities that you have to be born with slashdevelop?
I think so. I think uh now I'm a pretty emotional person, I would say, or feel pretty strong emotions, but not in investing. I'm remarkably immune to kind of volatility and that's a big advantage and it took some time for me to develop that. So you weren't born with that you think? No. So being emotional do you want to respond to volatility?
Yeah. And you just it's a bit again I you can learn a lot from other people's experience. It's one of the the few businesses where you can learn an enormous amount by reading about other periods in history. uh you know watch you know following Buffett's career the mistakes he made if you're investing a lot of capital every one of your mistakes is going to be big right so we've made big mistakes uh the good news is that the vast majority of things we've done have worked out really well and so that also gives you you know confidence over time but because we make very few investments you know we own eight things today or seven companies of that matter um if we get one wrong it's going to be big And so the other nature of our business you have to be comfortable with is a lot of public scrutiny, a lot of public criticism and that requires some uh experience call that.
I think we'll talk about some of that. Uh financially secure is something you I believe also recommend for even just everyday investors. Is there some general advice from the things you've been talking about that applies to everyday investors? Sure. So never invest money you can't afford to lose where it would if you lost this this money it you know you lose your house you etc.
So having being in a place where uh you're investing money that you don't care about the price in the short term it's money for your retirement and you take a really long-term view. I think that's key. Uh never investing where you borrow money against your securities. you know, the the markets offer you the opportunity to leverage your investment.
And in most worlds, you'll be okay except if you know there's a financial crisis or, you know, a nuclear device gets detonated, god forbid, somewhere in the world or there's a unexpected war or you know, someone kills a leader unexpectedly. You know, things happen that can change the course of history and markets react very negatively to those kinds of events.
and you can own the greatest business in the world trading for $100 a share and next moment it could be 50. So as long as you don't borrow against securities, you own really high quality businesses and it's not money that you need in the short term, uh then you can you can actually be thoughtful about it and that is a huge advantage.
The vast majority of investors it seems tend to be the ones that panic and the downturns get overrelated and when markets are doing well. So be able to think long term and be sufficiently financially secure such that you can afford to think long term. Now that Buffett is the ultimate long-term thinker and just the decisions he makes uh the consistency of the decisions he's made over time and fitting into that sort of long-term framework is a very uh very educational, let's put it that way, for the for learning about this business.
So you mentioned eight companies, but what do you think about mutual funds that for everyday investors that diversify across a larger number of companies? I think there are very few mutual funds uh there thousands and thousands of mutual funds. There very few that earn their keep in terms of the fees they charge.
uh they tend to be too diversified um and uh you know too short-term and you're often much better off just buying an an index fund and many of them perform they look if you look carefully at their portfolios are not so different from the underlying index itself and you tend to pay a much higher fee.
Uh now all that being said, there's some very talented mutual fund uh managers. A guy named Will Dan off at Fidelity's had a great record over a long period of time. You know, the famous Peter Lynch, uh Ron Baron, another great long-term growth stock investor. So there's some great uh mutual funds, but I put them in the handful versus the thousands.
And if you're in, you know, the thousands, I' I'd rather uh someone bought just an index on basically. Yeah, index funds. But what uh what would be the leap for an everyday investor to go to investing in a small number of companies like two, three, four, five companies? I even recommend for individual investors to invest in, you know, a dozen companies.
You don't get that much more benefit of diversification going from a dozen to 25 or even 50. You know, most of the benefits of diversification come in the first, you know, call it 10 or 12. Uh, and if you're investing in businesses that don't have a lot of debt, they're businesses that you can understand yourself.
You understand, you know, actually individual investors did a much better job analyzing Tesla than the so-called professional investors or analysts, the vast majority of them. So, if it's a business you understand, you if you bought a Tesla, you understand the product and its appeal to consumers. You know, it's a good place to start when you're analyzing a company.
Um, so I would invest in things you can understand. That's kind of a key. uh you know you like Chipotle, you you understand why they're successful. You can, you know, go there every week and you can monitor, you know, is anything changing? Uh, you know, how are these new, uh, kind of, uh, how's chicken al pastor?
Is that, is that a good upgrade from the the basic chicken? You know, the drink offerings improving? Uh, the stores clean. I think you should invest in companies you really understand, simple businesses where you can predict with a high degree of confidence what it's going to look like over time. And if you do that in a not particularly concentrated fashion and you don't borrow money against your securities, you'll probably do much better than your typical mutual fund.
Yeah, it's interesting. Consumers that love a thing are actually good analysts of that thing or I guess a good starting point. And by the way, there's much more information available today. When I was first investing, literally we had people faxing us documents from the SEC filings in Washington DC.
Now everything's available online. Conference call transcripts are free. um you know there's you have you have AI you know you have uh unlimited uh data and uh the all kinds of message boards and Reddit forums and things where people are you know sharing advice and everyone has their own you know by virtue of their career or experience they'll they'll they'll know about an industry or a business and that gives I would take advantage of your own competitive advantages is
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