White paper et autres études sur l'investissement et la finance

Une vidéo de Bruce Greenwald à l’université de Columbia. Elle n’est pas nouvelle mais elle reste néanmoins intéressante pour tout investisseur, amha. Elle fait parmi de la "Post Keynesian conference" de 2014.

Bonjour,

Tout d’abord, où est donc passée la file white papers?
Elle semble avoir été déplacé ou supprimée…

Ma contribution du jour:
Reflections on the Ten Attributes of Great Investors
par Michael J. Mauboussin, Dan Callahan, Darius Majd

1. Be numerate (and understand accounting).
2. Understand value (the present value of free cash flow).
3. Properly assess strategy (or how a business makes money).
4. Compare effectively (expectations versus fundamentals).
5. Think probabilistically (there are few sure things).
6. Update your views effectively (beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be
protected).
7. Beware of behavioral biases (minimizing constraints to good thinking).
8. Know the difference between information and influence.
9. Position sizing (maximizing the payoff from edge).
10. Read (and keep an open mind).

Message édité par l’équipe de modération (08/08/2016 14h22) :
- modification du titre ou de(s) mot(s)-clé(s)


IH : merci. Hélas la précédente file m’a été rapportée comme supprimée il y a plusieurs semaines. Je suis remonté en arrière d’un mois dans la sauvegarde, mais elle avait déjà été supprimée (manifestement par erreur) et donc impossible à restaurer.

Ce n’est pas une étude académique mais j’espère qu’elle aura sa place ici : Ten attributes of great investors, Thirty years, publié par le Crédit Suisse format pdf.

https://doc.research-and-analytics.csfb … BRMNZJ8%3d

Un excellent article (en anglais mais plutôt accessible), assez long mais qui vaut vraiment le coup d’oeil : The Psychology of Money.

L’auteur commence par évoquer deux histoires en parallèle : Grace Groner, orpheline à 12 ans, qui a vécu une vie très simple avec un maigre salaire. A sa mort, elle a légué une fortune de 7 millions de dollars à des organisations caritatives. Richard Fuscone, lui, a fait des études à Harvard, avait un poste de dirigeant chez Merrill Lynch, une énorme villa, etc. et a fini ruiné.

Et l’auteur de poursuivre :

The purpose of these stories is not to say you should be like Grace and avoid being like Richard. It’s to point out that there is no other field where these stories are even possible.

In what other field does someone with no education, no relevant experience, no resources, and no connections vastly outperform someone with the best education, the most relevant experiences, the best resources and the best connections? There will never be a story of a Grace Groner performing heart surgery better than a Harvard-trained cardiologist. Or building a faster chip than Apple’s engineers. Unthinkable. But these stories happen in investing.

That’s because investing is not the study of finance. It’s the study of how people behave with money. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. You can’t sum up behavior with formulas to memorize or spreadsheet models to follow. Behavior is inborn, varies by person, is hard to measure, changes over time, and people are prone to deny its existence, especially when describing themselves.

L’auteur évoque ensuite 20 biais psychologiques et comportementaux qui ont une grande importance en matière de gestion financière et d’investissement. Je ne les détaille pas ici mais je cite quelques extraits qui m’ont particulièrement plu :

The true cost of investing – or anything with money – is rarely the financial fee that is easy to see and measure. It’s the emotional and physical price demanded by markets that are pretty efficient. Monster Beverage stock rose 211,000% from 1995 to 2016. But it lost more than half its value on five separate occasions during that time. That is an enormous psychological price to pay. Buffett made $90 billion. But he did it by reading SEC filings 12 hours a day for 70 years, often at the expense of paying attention to his family. Here too, a hidden cost.
Every money reward has a price beyond the financial fee you can see and count. Accepting that is critical. Scott Adams once wrote: “One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard goes something like this: If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. It sounds trivial and obvious, but if you unpack the idea it has extraordinary power.” Wonderful money advice.

There are over 2,000 books picking apart how Warren Buffett built his fortune. But none are called “This Guy Has Been Investing Consistently for Three-Quarters of a Century.” But we know that’s the key to the majority of his success; it’s just hard to wrap your head around that math because it’s not intuitive. There are books on economic cycles, trading strategies, and sector bets. But the most powerful and important book should be called “Shut Up And Wait.” It’s just one page with a long-term chart of economic growth.

The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha attracts 40,000 people, all of whom consider themselves contrarians. People show up at 4 am to wait in line with thousands of other people to tell each other about their lifelong commitment to not following the crowd. Few see the irony.

If you see someone driving a $200,000 car, the only data point you have about their wealth is that they have $200,000 less than they did before they bought the car.
(…)
Wealth, in fact, is what you don’t see. It’s the cars not purchased. The diamonds not bought. The renovations postponed, the clothes forgone and the first-class upgrade declined. It’s assets in the bank that haven’t yet been converted into the stuff you see.

Room for error is underappreciated and misunderstood. It’s often viewed as a conservative hedge, used by those who don’t want to take much risk or aren’t confident in their views. But when used appropriately it’s the opposite. Room for error lets you endure, and endurance lets you stick around long enough to let the odds of benefiting from a low-probability outcome fall in your favor. The biggest gains occur infrequently, either because they don’t happen often or because they take time to compound. So the person with enough room for error in part of their strategy to let them endure hardship in the other part of their strategy has an edge over the person who gets wiped out, game over, insert more tokens, when they’re wrong.

There are also multiple sides to room for error. Can you survive your assets declining by 30%? On a spreadsheet, maybe yes – in terms of actually paying your bills and staying cash-flow positive. But what about mentally? It is easy to underestimate what a 30% decline does to your psyche. Your confidence may become shot at the very moment opportunity is at its highest. You – or your spouse – may decide it’s time for a new plan, or new career. I know several investors who quit after losses because they were exhausted. Physically exhausted. Spreadsheets can model the historic frequency of big declines. But they cannot model the feeling of coming home, looking at your kids, and wondering if you’ve made a huge mistake that will impact their lives.

Comme chaque trimestre, on trouve la liste des lettres trimestrielles de nombreux hedge funds sur reddit : Q1 2022 Letters & Reports : SecurityAnalysis

Celle d’Horizon Kinetics n’est pas encore parue, mais l’histoire récente a donné totalement raison au discours que Murray Stahl tenait depuis plusieurs années.