저자: 미상 · 외국인
요약 보기
투자 성공의 기반은 가치 판단이며, 가격과 가치의 관계가 핵심이다. 시장 심리는 낙관과 비관 사이를 진자처럼 오가므로 군중과 반대로 행동해야 한다. 위험은 변동성이 아니라 영구적 손실 가능성이며, 안전마진·분산투자·레버리지 회피로 방어해야 한다. 거시경제 예측에 의존하기보다 섹터·기업·자산에 대한 전문성으로 우위를 확보해야 한다.
다듬은 글
20. The most important thing is to put it all together. The best foundation for the success of an investment, or the success of an investment career, is value—having a good idea of how much what we want to buy is worth. There are many components and many ways to analyze the topic. In extremely simplified terms, the cash flow on the balance sheet is the value of tangible assets and the ability of the company or asset to generate cash.
Finally, there's the possibility that these things will increase. To achieve extraordinary results in investments, we need to have an extraordinary perception of value. Therefore, we should learn things that others don't know, see things differently, or analyze them better— ideally, all three. Our understanding of value must be based on solid, factual, and analytical foundations, and we need to hold to it firmly.
Only then will we know when to buy or sell. Only a strong sense of value will give us the necessary discipline to profit from an extremely overvalued asset whose price everyone imagines will continue to rise endlessly, or the courage to hold our position and buy more shares at the lowest price, averaging down, during a crisis, even if prices continue to fall daily.
Of course, for our efforts in these areas to be profitable, our valuation needs to be accurate. The relationship between price and value holds the ultimate key to success in investing. Buying below market value is the most reliable way to make a profit. Paying more than the agreed amount doesn't usually work out so well.
What causes an asset to be sold below its value? There are good buying opportunities, mainly because our perception often underestimates reality. Unlike high quality, which can be easily assessed, keen perception is able to detect overpricing. For this reason, investors often confuse the objective merit of an asset with a good investment opportunity.
The best investors never forget that they are looking for good buys, not good assets. In addition to creating profit potential, buying when the price is below value adds an important element to limiting risk. Paying more for the high growth of an asset and participating in a hot market are not the same things.
The relationship between price and value is influenced by psychological and technical factors, forces that can dominate fundamentals in the short term. Extreme price fluctuations due to these two factors offer opportunities for either large profits or large losses. To achieve the former and not the latter, we must insist on the concept of value and address both psychological and technical factors.
Economies and markets go through cycles of highs and lows. Whatever the current trend, most people tend to believe it will remain the same forever. This way of thinking leads to great danger, as it poisons the markets, drives valuations to extremes, and fuels bubbles and panic, which most investors find very difficult to deal with .
Similarly, the herd psychology of investing moves in a regular pattern, similar to the oscillation of a pendulum, from optimism to pessimism, from credulity to skepticism, from fear of missing out to fear of losing money, and therefore from enthusiasm to buy to the urgency to sell. The pendulum's oscillation leads the herd to buy at high prices and sell at low prices.
Therefore, being part of the herd is a recipe for disaster, while having a dissenting viewpoint at the extremes of the fluctuations will help us avoid losses and, in the end, bring us success. In particular, risk aversion, which at appropriate levels is the essential ingredient in a rational market, is sometimes too low and sometimes too high.
The fluctuation of investors' psychological state in this regard plays a very important role in the creation of bubbles and economic crises. We should never underestimate the power of psychological influences. Greed, fear, disregard for the rules of reality, conformity, envy, ego, and capitulation are all part of human nature, and their capacity to influence our actions reaches great depths, especially when they are at extreme points and shared by the herd.
They will influence others, and the sensible investor will also feel their effects. None of us should think that we are immune or that we are beyond its influence. Although we feel them, we must not succumb to them; instead, we must acknowledge them for what they are and fight against them. Reason must prevail over emotion.
Most trends, both bullish and bearish, end up going too far, benefiting those who recognize them early on and penalizing those who join last. This is the reasoning behind my number one motto about investing: "Whatever the wise man does at the beginning, the fool does at the end." The ability to resist excesses is rare, but it is an important attribute of the most successful investors.
It is impossible to know when an overheated market will decline or when a recession will end, giving way to a resumption of appreciation. Although it's impossible to know where we're going, it's important to know where we are. We can infer where markets are in their cycle from the behavior of those around us.
When other investors aren't worried, we should be cautious. When investors are panicking, we must become aggressive. However, even the opposing viewpoint will not always be profitable. Great buying and selling opportunities are associated with extreme price increases and, by definition, do not occur every day.
We also buy and sell at less attractive points in the cycle, since few of us can be content to act only once every few years. We must recognize when the odds of success are less favorable and proceed with more caution. The best results are likely obtained when buying based on solid value, a price that is low relative to value, and in an environment where the psychological disposition of investors is depressed.
Even so, however, things can remain contrary to us for a long time before they begin to behave in the way that, according to our belief, they should. Underpriced is far from being synonymous with increasing soon. Thus, the importance of my second motto is that there is no distinction between being far ahead of your time and being wrong.
It will take a lot of patience and strength to maintain the same positions for as long as necessary for them to prove correct. In addition to being able to quantify the value and acquire it when it is correctly priced, successful investors must have a sound approach to risk. They need to go far beyond the academic definition of risk as volatility and understand that the risk that matters most is the risk of permanent loss.
They need to reject increasing risk as a foolproof formula for investment success and understand that riskier investments imply a wider range of possible outcomes and a higher probability of loss. They need to be aware of the potential for loss present in each investment and be willing to accept it only when the reward is more than adequate.
Most investors are simplistic, only concerned with the possibility of obtaining returns. Some end up gaining a better understanding and learn that understanding risk is just as important as understanding return. But it is rare to find someone who achieves the necessary sophistication to appreciate correlation, a key element in controlling the risk of a global portfolio.
Due to differences in correlation, certain individual investments that have the same absolute risk can be combined in different ways, forming portfolios with very different total risk levels. Most investors believe that diversification consists of holding many different assets; few understand that diversification is only effective when the components of a portfolio respond differently to the same event in their environment.
Aggressive investing can produce exciting results when it works, especially during good periods; however, it is unlikely to generate returns as reliable as those of defensive investing. Thus, the low incidence and minor severity of losses are part of the best investment track records. Oak Tree's motto, "If we avoid the losers, the winners will take care of themselves," has served us well over the years.
A diversified investment portfolio in which it is unlikely that each of the individual assets will produce significant losses is a good start to investment success. Risk management is the foundation of defensive investing. Instead of simply trying to do the right thing, the defensive investor's emphasis is on not doing the wrong thing.
Since ensuring the ability to survive in adverse circumstances is incompatible with maximizing returns during good times, investors must choose which balance they want between the two. The defensive investor chooses the first option. Margin of error is a critical element in defensive investing. Most investments will succeed if the future unfolds as expected, but if the future doesn't turn out as expected, we need a margin of error so that the results are tolerable.
An investor can obtain a margin for error by insisting on the existence of tangible and lasting value, here and now, by buying only when the price is well below its value, by avoiding leverage, and through diversification. Emphasizing these elements increases the possibility of limiting your gains during good periods, but will also maximize your chances of remaining unscathed when things are not going well.
My third favorite motto is: "Never forget the 6-foot-tall man who drowned crossing the creek whose depth was, on average, 5 feet." The margin of error gives us the power to persevere and survive in the most difficult situations. Risk control and margin of error should be present in our portfolios at all times.
But we must remember that they represent hidden assets. Most years in the markets are good. It is only in bad years, when the tide is low, that the value of defense becomes evident. Thus, during good years, defensive investors should be content knowing that their gains, even if lower than the maximum, were obtained with risk protection in place, even if it wasn't necessary.
One of the essential requirements for investment success, and therefore part of the psychological toolkit of most major investors, is the perception that we don't know what the future holds in terms of macroeconomics. Few people, if any, know more than the consensus about what will happen to the economy, interest rates, and market aggregates.
Therefore, investors will make better use of their time if they try to use it to gain an advantage by leveraging available knowledge, namely about sectors, companies, and assets. The more specialized your focus, the more likely you are to learn things that others don't know. There are far more investors who presume to know the future course of economies and markets and act accordingly than investors who actually do.
They take aggressive actions based on this future they claim to know, but this usually doesn't produce the desired results. Investing based on predictions held with considerable conviction, but which are incorrect, is a potential source of significant losses. Many investors, both amateur and professional, believe that the world operates through orderly processes that are understandable and predictable.
They ignore the randomness of things and the probability distribution that underlies future events. Therefore, they choose to base their actions on a scenario that they believe will happen. This works sometimes and the investor receives praise, but it's not consistent, so it's not capable of producing long-term success.
It's worth noting that, in both economic forecasting and investment management, there's usually someone who gets it exactly right, but rarely does the same person get it right twice. The most successful investors are reasonably accurate most of the time, and that's much better than what others are able to achieve.
An important part of doing the right thing involves avoiding the pitfalls often presented by economic fluctuations, business difficulties, market swings caused by fads, and the credulity of other investors. There is no foolproof formula, however, awareness of the possibility of these potential dangers is the best starting point to avoid becoming victims of them.
Neither defensive investors, who limit their losses in a falling market , nor aggressive investors, who make substantial gains in a rising market , have proven that they possess the necessary skills. In order for us to say that investors truly add value, we need to see how they behave in environments that are not particularly suited to their style.
Is an aggressive investor able to minimize their losses in a downtrend market? Will defensive investors participate substantially in the gains when the market is rising? This type of asymmetry is a true expression of investors' skill. Does the investor have more winning assets than losing ones? Are the winners' gains greater than the losers' losses?
Are the good years more beneficial than the disadvantages of the bad years? The long-term results are better than what the investor's style might suggest . These are the attributes of the best investors. Without them, returns may be the result of little more than market movement and beta. Only investors with unusual insight can regularly predict the probability distribution governing future events and notice when potential returns outweigh the risks lurking at the negative end of the distribution.
This simple description of the requirements for successful investing, based on an understanding of the range of possible gains and the risk of unfavorable events, contains the elements that should receive our attention. I leave that task to you, reader. These elements will take you on a challenging, exciting, and thought-provoking journey.
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