Sherlock Holmes does not require any attention. The fictional character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became synonymous with Detecting, Deducing, and Investigating cases.
While I had articulated Investing Lessons which can be learnt from this great detective in the past, thought of reproducing the same below (after all, as Holmes himself had said, “Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.”)
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# Lesson 1: “There are some trees, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans and in stocks” (Underline added by me).
This typically is found in companies or in industries which see Value Migration, i.e. flow of economic and shareholder value away from obsolete business models to new, more effective designs that are better able to satisfy customers’ most important priorities.
For example, Economic Value shifted to Electronic Vehicles from the traditional internal combustion vehicle manufacturers. This resulted in Tesla’s market value zooming past that of GM and Ford.
Have you identified Value Migration in your industry yet?
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# Lesson 2: It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
This is typically what happens when we get lured by positive announcement by companies. This could be in the form of large order book, new launches, getting acquired, new markets, etc.
The monkey mind jumps to a conclusion to Invest and then we look for facts to justify our conclusion.
After all, man is not a rational animal, but a rationalizing one!!!
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# Lesson 3: “It is of the first importance…not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities…The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.”
Often, investors’ mind gets coloured by the impeccably dressed promoters, their impressive banter and their supreme confidence of acquisitions working out positively.
More money has been lost on account of this dis (belief) rather than evaluating company’s fundamentals deeply.
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# Lesson 4: “I am very busy just now, and I desire no distractions.”
How many investors sit for hours trying to read up uninterrupted and NOT look at the ticker or market news almost every second!! With attention time spans reduced to seconds now, thanks to the fancy digital devices, distractions have become a norm rather than an exception!!!
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# Lesson 5: I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.”
Some of the greatest investors have acknowledged their follies publicly, rather than passing on the buck to inept management, regulatory changes, excessive competition, etc.
Acknowledgement and Learning from mistakes – Doesn’t come easy!!!
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# Lesson 6: “My case is, as I have told you, almost complete; but we must not err on the side of overconfidence. Simple as the case seems now, there may be something deeper underlying it.”
Often, investors’ get carried away by their over confidence of their understanding of the industry, company, management, and their forecasting prowess, mostly a recipe for disaster.
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# Lesson 7: “Perhaps, when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand. The case has been an interesting one…because it serves to show very clearly how simple the explanation may be of an affair which at first sight seems to be almost inexplicable.”
Some of the best Investing ideas can be penned down in a single paragraph. The moment you hear of an investment strategy or an idea containing words like Enhanced, Structured, Beta, Proforma, Adjusted, EBITDA; it’s primarily a garb to hide adverse numbers or justify the crap.
Simplicity is the key!!!
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# Lesson 8: “There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.”
“Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would be to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of crime. Everything comes in circles…The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It’s all been done before, and will be again.”
Human psychology around Investing is nothing but Cyclical.
As the stock price keeps increasing, most investors get optimistic, greedy and finally credulous. Finally, at the tipping point, when the stock price declines, investors become pessimistic, skeptical and fearful.
This oscillation of greed and fear keeps happening all the time and in circles, at times, in different sizes!!!
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# Lesson 9: “In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practice it much. In the everyday affairs of life, it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected.”
It is like looking at the child and subsequently be able to tell about the nature of his parents!!
A small exercise: Just by looking at the Profit & Loss Statement and Balance Sheet, would you be able to identify the company or the industry? If yes, it’s a wonderful insight to have!!!
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# Lesson 10: It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital. Otherwise, your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated. In this case, there was not the slightest doubt in my mind from the first that the key of the whole matter must be looked for in the scrap of paper in the dead man’s hand.
Same goes with Investing!! There is so much of incidental data, only some of it is vital.
While many investors focus on Debt/Equity as a data point and believe that ratio of less than 1.0x or 1.5x is favourable and a company having D/E of the said threshold is safe.
However, more vital are the sustainable Cash flows, which should be able to service the company’s debt (payment of interest and repayment of principal)
Also, if the company were to keep diluting its equity to maintain the threshold ratios (primarily to remain paper solvent), the ratio obviously loses its relevance eventually. Often, missed by most!!
Hope key of the whole matter when it comes to investing, especially in industries, viz. especially Infrastructure, Power, Iron & Steel and Realty must be looked in the Cash Flows.
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# Lesson 11: Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention? To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. The dog did nothing in the night-time. That was the curious incident. Obviously, the midnight visitor was someone whom the dog knew well. The mid-night visitor can be compared with…
The mid-night visitor can be compared with Mr. Market, i.e. when stock market swings wildly, especially in the downturn due to excessive pessimism and fear among market participants. This leads to a huge panic sell-off, and it seems to be a dooms-day scenario across.
The dog, however, can be compared to a seasoned Investor. Investors who have seen carnage in the past do not really get perturbed by market down-ward oscillations or even meltdowns. In fact, most of them look at it as an opportunity to collect good companies at fair / low prices in their basket.
Just like a dog knows the mid-night visitor and his ways, similarly, a seasoned investor knows Mr. Market’s ways, both good and bad!!
Be a dog, my friend!! A Dog!! Metaphorically, of course!!
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# Lesson 12: While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.
“The Crowd” by Gustave Le Bon is one such book, which provides some deep insights about how an individual’s conscious activity gets substituted by the unconscious action of crowd.
Mental unity: Participants in the Market puts them in possession of a sort of Collective Mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each one of them would feel, think, and act were they would, in a state of isolation. No wonder, Einstein and Newton – both considered as geniuses, lost their individual rationality, thereby losing lot of money in front of Market’s collective wisdom.
Impulsive & Mobile: Market is often at the mercy of external exciting causes and reflects their incessant variations. It is the slave of the impulses which it receives and is inadvertently mobile.
Exaggeration and Ingenuousness: Whether the market is bullish or bearish, it leads to exaggeration of the sentiments among the market participants. This exaggeration of sentiments leads itself very quickly by a process of suggestion and contagion, considerably increasing its force. Also, with majority of the market participants being naive, this unsuspecting character leads to a story bubble of stocks, thereby creating extreme oscillations of greed and fear.
Emotional: Market is more rational than emotional. That’s precisely the reason market participants say “Bhaav Bhagwaan Che” – Market Price is God, but this is not always true!! Sometimes, the market turns more emotional than rational.
When market turns emotional (sometimes), an independent prepared investor needs to understand the emotionality of the market along with his; this is when money gets made!!!
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# Lesson 13: Men at his time of life do not change all their habit and exchange willingly the charming climate of Florida for the lonely life of an English provincial town. His extreme love of solitude in England suggests the idea that he was in fear of someone or something, so we may assume as a working hypothesis that it was fear of someone or something which drove him from America.
You would often find that people after a certain age just stick to investing in Fixed Deposits. Their extreme love towards investing in FDs which does not even cover them for inflation clearly suggests that they fear losses – so it can be assumed as a working hypothesis that they have either incurred losses investing in Equities directly or as an Equity partner in businesses. This essentially drove them towards FDs. The following characteristics make FDs usually a poor investing class, again from a long-term perspective:
Does not cover for inflation: The bond holder may feel richer, but one usually doesn’t eat richer.
Upside is capped in terms of fixed interest payments + principal repayment: The bond holder would only get fixed return, despite the underlying company doing extremely well.
Exposes the bond holder with reinvestment risk: Reinvesting interest receipts by the bond holder in a low interest-rate environment leads to lower returns.
Creates an Illusion of Capital Protection among the bond holders: INR 7 trillion+ of Indian corporate papers have been downgraded since IL&FS fiasco.
What an interesting read!
Really like the presentation style of spacing each lesson out to make it feel like one is reading small posts rather than a long wordy article.
Kudos!
-Kavita
Thanks Kavita for your feedback and comments!!