This week in intelligent investing

A podcast hosted by John Mihaljevic together with Phil Ordway and Elliot Turner.

JM talk at Google wisdom bits

• Generally, I want to only buy a stock where I am excited if it goes down 50% because then I can buy even more.
• You don’t need to swing at every idea coming your way. The only thing that matters is that you’re right on the companies you do buy.

May 29

Phil Ordway -- the big ideas

• I teach students to be asset managers. Here are the key ideas (one-pager that I give them at the end):
  • Think for yourself.
  • Overconfidence is deadly.
  • Track and measure what you do.
  • Inverting (by Charlie Munger).
  • Ability to hold two competing ideas at the same time.
  • Ratios vs. valuation (consider qualitative details).
  • Cost of capital is determined by what else you can do with the money.

• Elliot:
  • Books:
    • 100 to 1 in the stock market.
    • More than you know.
    • Alchemy of finance.
  • Think probabilistically.
  • Get very good at listening.
  • Markets are not zero sum.
  • Don't be scared to ask obvious questions: the answers might be not obvious.
  • Know yourself and control your emotions.
  • In the markets the tails are fat... tail events do happen.

• John
  • Have a capital allocator mindset (rather than a small fish mindset). Only buy stock in companies you'd be happy to buy.
  • Be greedy when others are fearful and vice versa.
  • Management incentives: compensation structure, insider ownership.