Saturday 16 June 2012

Diversify

If you try to give advise to any Tom, Dick or Harry about stock markets or investing; what you will get back is some borrowed wisdom from Buffett.
Why Buffett?
Because Buffett is all he knows or has heard about. Enters- Authority Bias, Halo Effect, Liking Bias and Vividity.

Actually this is a problem of our mind. It can't handle multiple things/ reasons/ situations/ persons in it.
More than one creates a Lollapalooza Effect {yes, again, my mind is back to Munger :)} with unpredictable outcomes which our mind dislikes. So, we tend to prefer one over many in most of the situations.

But if all we have is Buffett, we tend to overuse him & his wisdom.

So diversify. Diversify not just in what you buy but also whom you read.

Just because Buffett made more money than Templeton or Graham or Dorsey or Faber or Lynch or Taleb, that doesn't automatically mean that he is the most intelligent one also. Don't blindly fall for Outcome Bias.

Remember If all you have is a Hammer, everything looks like a Nail.