Well, perhaps the best way is to emulate some of the trading principles used by the pundits of yesteryear who beat the stock market no matter the emotions and mechanics of the institutional herd. For instance:
Bernard Baruch – Some 70 years ago, he would research a stock, buy it, and then each time the stock rose 10% from his purchase price, buy an additional amount equal to his first purchase. If the stock began declining he would sell everything he had bought when the drop equaled 10% of its top price …
Baron Rothschild – His success formula was centered on the famous quote attributed to him – “I never buy at the bottom and I always sell too soon.” …
Jesse Livermore – This legendary speculator profited enormously by calling the various 1921 – 1927 advances correctly. In 1929 he reasoned that the market was overvalued, but finally gave up and became bullish near the top in the fall of that infamous year.
He quickly cut his losses, however, and switched to the “short side.” Livermore listed three major points for his success:
1. Sensitivity to mob psychology
2. Willingness to take a loss
3. Liquidity, meaning that stock positions should not be taken that cannot be sold in 15 minutes “At the market” …
Addison Cammack – A stockbroker from Kentucky who swore by the two-point stop-loss rule. “If you’re wrong,” he said, “you might as well be wrong by two points as ten.” He followed this method successfully and was one of the few bears to make a fortune on Wall Street and keep it …
Interestingly, all of these disciplines have one thing in common. They all adhere to Benjamin Graham’s mantra, “The essence of portfolio management is the management of RISKS, not the management of RETURNS. Well-managed portfolios start with this precept.”
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Well, perhaps the best way is to emulate some of the trading principles used by the pundits of yesteryear who beat the stock market no matter the emotions and mechanics of the institutional herd. For instance:Light, Taming the Beast
Larry Light’s Taming the Beast: Wall Street’s Imperfect Answers to Making Money (Wiley, 2011) is perfect summer reading fare. The author, a financial reporter and editor, is a skilled storyteller. In this book he explores a range of investment strategies and instruments, traces their development, and in the process profiles some of the best-known investors and academics.
He covers value investing (Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett), stocks (Jeremy Siegel), indexes (John Bogle), bonds (Bill Gross), growth investing (Thomas Rowe Price), international investing (John Templeton), real estate (Donald Trump), alternatives, asset allocation, short selling (James Chanos), hedge funds (Alfred Winslow Jones and Steve Cohen), and behaviorism (Daniel Kahneman and his followers).
Light’s thesis is that “investing success does not come in one flavor” and that “the trick is to be sufficiently flexible to dip into any or all of [the approaches he describes], but by the same token, to know their limitations.” (p. 254) He does a good job of spelling out these limitations. Even for more experienced investors who are well aware of many of these limitations, Little’s prose is so quick-paced that the book should be read, not skimmed. (more…)
Benjamin Graham Quotes
Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process. – View Quote Details on Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit… - Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble…to give way to hope, fear and greed. – View Quote Details on Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational…
- You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right. – View Quote Details on You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees…
- Warren Buffett, story from Benjamin Graham: A story that was passed down from Ben Graham illustrates the lemminglike behavior of the crowd: “Let me tell you the story of the oil prospector who met St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. When told his occupation, St. Peter said, “Oh, I’m really sorry. You seem to meet all the tests to get into heaven. But we’ve got a terrible problem. See that pen over there? That’s where we keep the oil prospectors waiting to get into heaven. And it’s filled—we haven’t got room for even one more.” The oil prospector thought for a minute and said, “Would you mind if I just said four words to those folks?” “I can’t see any harm in that,” said St. Pete. So the old-timer cupped his hands and yelled out, “Oil discovered in hell!” Immediately, the oil prospectors wrenched the lock off the door of the pen and out they flew, flapping their wings as hard as they could for the lower regions. “You know, that’s a pretty good trick,” St. Pete said. “Move in. The place is yours. You’ve got plenty of room.” The old fellow scratched his head and said, “No. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go along with the rest of ’em. There may be some truth to that rumor after all.” – View Quote Details on Warren Buffett, story from Benjamin Graham: A story that was…
Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process. – Lessons From John Templeton
1. “I never ask if the market is going to go up or down, because I don’t know, and besides it doesn’t matter. I search nation after nation for stocks, asking: Where is the one that is lowest priced in relation to what I believe its worth?” Like every other great investor in this series of blog posts John did do not make bets based on macroeconomic predictions. What some talking head may say about markets as a whole going up or down was simply not relevant in his investing. John focused on companies and not macro markets. He was a staunch value investor who once said: “The best book ever written [was Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham].
2. “If you want to have a better performance than the crowd, you must do things differently from the crowd. I’ve found my results for investment clients were far better here [in the Bahamas] than when I had my office in 30 Rockefeller Plaza. When you’re in Manhattan, it’s much more difficult to go opposite the crowd.” The mathematics of investing dictate that investing with the crowd means you will earn zero alpha, because the crowd is the market. You must sometimes be willing to take a position that is different from the crowd and be right about that position, to earn alpha. John put it this way: “If you buy the same securities everyone else is buying, you will have the same results as everyone else.”
3. “The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy, and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell. Bull markets are born on pessimism, grown on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria. People are always asking me: where is the outlook good, but that’s the wrong question…. The right question is: Where is the outlook the most miserable? For those properly prepared in advance, a bear market in stocks is not a calamity but an opportunity.” To be able to sell when people are most pessimistic requires courage. Being courageous is easier if you are making bets with “house money.” Making bets with the rent money is always unwise. Templeton believed problems create opportunity. For example, it was on the day that Germany invaded Poland that he saw one of his best buying opportunities since prices were so low and values so high. Simply telling his broker that day to buy every stock selling under $1 yielded a 4X return for John. (more…)
Speculation Defined
Graham and Dodd’s Definition of Speculation
Graham and Dodd’s Definition of SpeculationIn their 1934 classic text, Security Analysis, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd provided a general definition of speculation: “An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and a satisfactory return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.”
By this definition, most people who buy stocks are speculators. We can attempt to sharpen Graham and Dodd’s definition by including time-scale. Speculators are not interested in putting their money into a stock or commodity for a long time. They want to see a good profit quickly – on a time scale of minutes to months. If their money does not quickly perform well in a situation, they move it into another situation.
In pursuit of greater gain, speculators take greater risks with their capital than people who put their money into Savings & CD Accounts.
Jesse Livermore’s Definition of Speculation
Jesse Livermore, the 20th century’s most (in)famous speculator provided his own definition of speculation – preceding Graham and Dodd’s by several years. In Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, under his pseudonym of Lawrence Livingston, he said: “The speculator is not an investor. His object is not to secure a steady return on his money at a good rate of interest, but to profit by either a rise or a fall in the price of whatever he may be speculating in.” (more…)
Legacy of Benjamin Graham- Video
Last week I stumbled across this excellent video about Graham which includes old clips from his investment classes as well as some of his former students (including Warren Buffett, Rob Brandes and Irving Kahn) giving interviews about the effect the legendary investor had on them:
The Greatest Investment Book Ever Written
No, I’m not talking about Security Analysis or Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham or even Greenblatt’s You Can Be a Stock Market Genius. I’m talking about Doyle Brunson’s Super System: A Course in Power Poker.
OK, so the title of this post is a bit of an exaggeration and yes, there are probably tons of better poker books out there now post-extended-poker-boom. The first edition of this book was published in 1978. The connection between poker and trading is nothing new. Just google “poker and trading” and there’s a lot of stuff out there; how poker guys started hedge funds, how a hedge fund guy became a poker guy, how they are similar/different, what can be learned from one or the other etc. And the connection between gambling and trading was well documented in Fortune’s Formula.
But I just wanted to make a post about this book because I’m starting to reread it again (don’t ask). I am not a poker player, but I remember reading this book a few years ago having borrowed it from a poker-playing friend. Knowing that many traders and investors are very good poker players, I wanted to see what I can learn from reading about poker.
I remember falling out of my chair at the similiarites between poker and investing. I come from more of a trading background than an investing one and what was written in this book, particularly the early chapter “General Poker Strategy”, has great advice that applies to traders and investors too. I would make that chapter required reading along with the other investment “must reads”.
Anyway, here are some comments about what Brunson talks about in this chapter by sections. I only comment on some of the stuff so this isn’t a summary of the chapter by any means. (more…)
Quotes From BENJAMIN GRAHAM
