3 Football and Investing
There are some similarities in
football and investing with a few exceptions. Being a Pats fan, I was motivated
by the impossible and greatest comeback of the Patriots in Super Bowl LI to
write this article. Hence I use Brady/Belichick as an example as often as
possible.
Belichick
He is the greatest chess player.
In most of his talks after a win, he always shows he is the ‘loser’ in his
monotone voice. He moves his facial muscles to a minimum. Politely speaking, he
is boring. Do you want a boring coach who gives results? I sincerely like his
boredom. I prefer him over the well-presentable x-CEO of Pennies or the
best-seller written by a Ph.D. telling us to exit the market in 2009 (I am not
100% sure as I do not have his original edition).
Belichick and Brady’s philosophy
It is quite simple and most are
applicable to investing and actually to most we do in life.
·
The coaches and players have to love football.
·
Work hard.
·
Evaluate all possibilities and prepare for them.
Study the match ups.
About investing, select the stocks that have the
highest appreciation potential at acceptable risk in the current market
conditions. To illustrate, select high-dividend stocks when interest rates is
low or defensive stocks in risky markets.
·
Understand the opposing coaches will work on
your last hero; use the last hero as a decoy if possible.
·
Eat humble pies; do not motivate your opponent
team.
·
Concentrate on your next game (next stock to
trade about investing).
·
Multiple skills. If you say you play one
position only, you do not fit into their system. Investing requires multi
disciplines from evaluating, psychology to simple computer skills.
·
Draft the best players at reasonable prices.
Brady is a sixth round pick. About investing, buy low and sell high.
·
The Pats never spend a lot on one or two
players. About investing, we do not put all eggs in one basket.
·
Trade the player who does not fit in with the
team such as the backup quarterback when Brady is playing at his peak. About
investing, trade stocks to improve the portfolio.
·
Prefer players with potentials, not what they
have accomplished. From the last two SB wins, God must be a fan of Pats. It is
similar to trading value stocks.
·
A successful person does not depend on luck although
luck has something to do with this Super Bowl win to me.
·
Take advantage of the misfits, changes and their
bad decisions. The Falcons defense was exhausted for working too hard and too
long in the first half. In the last quarter, Falcons could win easily by
running with the ball. About investing, it is the contrary investing to institutional
investors but ensure they are really making errors.
·
Never give up. When you had 25 points to make up
against a worthy opponent, do not give up.
It is a little exception about investing: Sometimes we
have to give up bad stocks due to our original bad evaluations or the
fundamentals change.
·
Brady and most successful quarterbacks throw the
ball to the open receiver consistently, not always to the star receiver. About
investing, it is called diversification.
·
Adjust your strategy if appropriate. Being a
Monday quarterback, I would like the Pats to adjust the strategy in the start
of the second quarter.
About investing, no strategy is evergreen and no metric
such as P/E always works. Only use the ones that work recently – adaptive
investing in my term.
Football is a team work. Everyone in the team contributes. No one including Brady cannot be replaced. Hightower and White contributed a lot to the comeback. About investing, do not depend on your own research only but check out other researches from reliable sources.
11 Investing risks
I presented the risk of losing
money due to politics and government regulations. Many sectors such as
utilities are sensitive to the interest rates that is governed by the Fed and
hence we have an interest risk.
Economic risk is another one.
When we have a recession, most likely the market will be down. If the investor
loses his or her job, s/he is forced to sell the stock. It is a personal risk.
If many lose their jobs at the same time, the risk will be spread to others.
Sector risk is another one. For
example, when all the internet stocks in 2000 fell, it affected many related
sectors such as computer and software.
When the CEO does not do a good
job or the company’s products fail, the stock will most likely go down. It is
the management risk. When the company speculates such as Enron betting on
energy futures, we share their risk too.
Inflation is another risk. The buying power decreases especially in the long term. Tax is not a risk but it causes you to lose some of your profits.
There will be virtually no risk
in buying CDs and/or government bonds. However, the interest does not keep up
with inflation (the inflation risk). Our capitalist system punishes us for not
taking risk.
15 The Cover & the Art of War
The spider depicts how we buy
stocks: Time, Find and Score. For the spider, it is Wait, Aim and Bite.
Actually its availability from
the free clip arts is the sole reason for my choice and the above is makeup. J
I have two
other options for the title of this book: “The Complete Art of Investing” and
“The Art of Investing: Complete Edition”. I chose the controversial one.
The Art of War
The title of this book was
inspired by the above book that was written about 2500 years ago. I was
surprised that no one uses the title The Art of Investing.
With some minor interpretation
(such as the titles of the officials, the capital names...), Chinese text can
be understood even from that long ago. I believe they're craved on bamboo. It
has 13 chapters. I believe there were more books from this author and got lost
from the long history. This book could be the official recording from the
emperor, a usual practice in Chinese history.
Japanese business men use this book and the Romance of Three Kingdoms a lot. The US army adopted this book as the required reading for their officers. I do not think it would be useful in today's warfare except the urban wars that we lose most of the time. Maybe the other side of the war studied the book harder than us. I will try to see what and how this book is relevant to investing; so far I cannot find a lot.
The story. The emperor asked that author to demonstrate his technique of training an army. He asked the emperor's ladies to learn how to drill. After several laughs, two leaders of the drill were beheaded and then everyone was serious and then he had trained successfully the most beautiful army in world's history.
Japanese business men use this book and the Romance of Three Kingdoms a lot. The US army adopted this book as the required reading for their officers. I do not think it would be useful in today's warfare except the urban wars that we lose most of the time. Maybe the other side of the war studied the book harder than us. I will try to see what and how this book is relevant to investing; so far I cannot find a lot.
The story. The emperor asked that author to demonstrate his technique of training an army. He asked the emperor's ladies to learn how to drill. After several laughs, two leaders of the drill were beheaded and then everyone was serious and then he had trained successfully the most beautiful army in world's history.
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