theBlogOfAlright

 Lessons: A PART OF ALL YOU EARN IS YOURS TO KEEP One must save at least 1/10th of whatever he/she makes in order to become wealthy. One must understand that you must keep a part of what you make in order to become wealthy. SEVEN CURES FOR A LEAN PURSE 1. In order to start fattening your purse, you must start saving - the book suggests saving at least 1/10th of what you make 2. Control Your Expenditures - you must pay yourself first the 1/10th and live off of the rest of the 9/10ths of what you make. The book suggest that you won't even notice saving the 1/10th but if you don't even save the 1/10th then you will likely spend the whole thing. Most people will be able to figure out how to live on 9/10ths of their income with proper budgeting and sticking to that budget. You must always live within your means. 3. Make your savings multiply - After saving, you must invest your savings in order to have your money multiply. The book suggests lending it out at a certain rate so that y

 I finally understand what Buffett meant when he said you don’t have to swing at every pitch. As individual investors (or non-institutional investors), we don’t have the pressure to perform year-after-year. No one is holding us accountable to return 10% a year - this gives us flexibility to buy or not buy - or i.e. to stay in cash for prolonged periods of time (and perhaps stay in money market). This provides individual investors the option to only swing at the truly great pitches (wait till a stock is convincingly undervalued). Of course, you can go short - but you then fall into the trap of trying to time the market. And as Buffett has also said, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. If the market keeps running up because of irrationality - or some other reason - you lose if you are short. So why even take the chance? Why not just stay in cash and be safe, and if the market does tank, that's when you strike/swing the hardest.

If you become overly sad or depressed for no apparently good reason, perhaps the case is that you're thinking about it too much. The antidote maybe be just to accept it and keep moving forward - it's probably not as bad as you think it is? In the words of Marcus Aurelius: "we often suffer more in imagination than in reality". Don't over think it, actually, stop thinking about it if you can, and remember that even this too shall pass one day. Seldom are things that last forever. In fact, cherish what you can of the moment(s) because it likely won't last!

Failing Forward: it means that if at any time you fear of doing something - just say yes - and treat it as a learning lesson or opportunity. Framing is key here. The fact is that if you don't ever try, you will never learn the skills to be good at it and have the confidence to do that thing independently in the future. The counter argument is that you don't intend on acquiring the skills to be good at the thing you want to do. I.e. you don't find any future value in learning and acquiring the skills to be good at the thing you want to do - I.e. You're only going to do this one time.  E.g. I'm only going to go skydiving once in my life so I don't need to be good at skydiving, there's no use in acquiring those skills for the future. However, if you can see yourself doing the thing more than once it even very occasionally, the value in acquiring those skills (DIY) increases (e.g. cooking a good healthy meal).

The book The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks is a book about investing. However, the essence of the moral of the story is this: You cannot be above average by being the consensus. Being the consensus or taking the consensus view you will only become or earn average. In order to be above average you must take the non-consensus view or do non-consensus things... But this is not enough, you must also be RIGHT about your non-consensus view or actions. Taking a non-consensus view or action and being wrong will take you below average. For example: you want to drive to get Downtown. If you want to get there at an average time, then take the average route — the route that everyone else takes. However, the only way you can get there faster than everyone else is if you take the non-consensus route — a hopeful shortcut. However, if you do take the non-consensus route, you also have to be right about it being faster (it better be a shortcut and not a long cut). If you're wrong about the s

 When Benjamin Graham said:  "the stock market is a voting machine in the short-term, and a weighing machine in the long-term" What did he mean by that? Well, he meant that in the short-term, the stock market (and stock prices) are the result of the collective whims of individuals participating in the stock market (i.e. buyers and sellers), bidding up or down the price of a share or stock. However, in the long-term, the fundamentals of a business - whether the business is profitable, growing, and will continue to grow, ultimately determines a stock's value (or in other words the value of a share in that business). So how does this play out in simple terms? The stock market is a voting machine in the short-term : People don't need to buy things out of reason. Some, or even most of the time, people will buy things because they like them or they feel like buying it. To be quite honest, no one really needs a good reason to do anything. Of course, you want to be rational w