There are so, so many ways to get smarter. Read, study, live, experience -- they all help and are avenues to gaining smarts. Another way, and one of my favorites, is to be around people smarter than me or read the things they say. I find that smaller snippets of information can be just as useful as large amounts, sometimes more beneficial because I retain almost all of the small amounts but a much smaller percentage of the larger amounts.
That said, Charlie Munger is credited with being Warren Buffet's investing genius. Unfortunately Mr. Munger recently passed away. He was very colorful in his comments and insights. These are a few of his quotes that I find most worth sharing:
Every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something and your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity, but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion.
Without the method of learning, you're like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. It's just not going to work very well.
Live within your income and save so that you can invest.
If you’re going to invest in stocks for the long term or real estate, of course there are going to be periods when there’s a lot of agony and other periods when there’s a boom. And I think you just have to learn to live through them.
Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.
I’d say we’re demonstrating what might be called the fundamental algorithm of life — repeat what works.
We make actual decisions very rapidly, but that’s because we have spent so much time preparing ourselves by quietly reading.
It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
People calculate too much and think too little.
There's a lot to take from these. Read to get smarter. Succeed by not being dumb. Patience versus pressure. I like them because they are not just one thing or another; they are a blend. Blending brings together the best of several things while eliminating the worst of those same things. The result can only be better.
Happy Holidays and may the remainder of your year be most merry!