In this special edition of InvestorInsights, we share the biggest ideas that we learned from various experienced value investors and money managers we interviewed during 2019
Bookworm: Alchemy
Post the second world war, when the western economies experienced a massive boom, the number of people living and working in high rises increased exponentially. These tall establishments became more convenient with the wide adoption of elevators.
In spite of elevators saving time and effort (that would’ve gone in climbing the stairs), people started complaining about delays and the slowness of elevators.
We, humans, are inherently discontent with what we have, aren’t we? Instead of feeling grateful for the fact that elevator saves us from the pain of trudging up floors on the foot, we get frustrated about having to wait a few extra minutes. Such is the human nature. However, it’s not the waiting that bothers us. It’s boredom.
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Behaviouronomics: The Cargo Cult
Elon Musk has built multiple billion-dollar companies — Paypal, SpaceX, and Tesla. His IQ is off the charts. But even a more remarkable thing about Musk is that he can find, attract, and retain very smart people to work with him on moonshot ideas like space travel, underground highways, electric cars, etc.
Before you can convince and retain brilliant co-workers, you need to have a robust filtering mechanism. Given a chance, very few people would refuse an opportunity to associate with Elon Musk. Which means, he would be receiving thousands of requests.
How does Musk find these people with super thinking abilities? What is his method of separating genius problem solvers from average thinkers?
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Bookworm: A Mind for Numbers
Whether you hate numbers or love them, there’s no denying that being in the business of investing you can’t afford being numbers shy. Of course, successful investing doesn’t require you to be a mathematician but having an intuitive feel for numbers goes a long way in making the process of finding great businesses fun and intellectually stimulating.
If you’re reading this I won’t hesitate to make the assumption that you’re a knowledge worker, i.e., someone who gets paid not for the physical labour but for their knowledge and cognitive abilities to turn that know-how into something valuable and useful. And one skill that knowledge workers need the most is the ability to learn quickly and efficiently.
This means you should always be on the lookout to find the best strategies about meta-learning — learning how to learn.
Barbara Oakley teaches an online course Learning How to Learn and it wouldn’t be an overstatement if I say that this course has been the most popular online course in the world for many years.
Let Your Curiosity Take You Places
Randall Monroe has an incredible mind. Even if his name doesn’t ring a bell, I am sure you’ve seen his work. He’s the creator of XKCD comic strip. Monroe, a physicist, was working for NASA before he became a full time cartoonist.
Monroe had a significant fan following among nerds because of the XKCD but he shot into fame when his book The Things Explainer caught the attention of Bill Gates. Monroe’s genius is revealed in his book where he takes up the challenge to explain complicated things using a vocabulary of only one thousand simple words.
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