Embrace the analog

What were you doing this Valentine's Day? Nothing says I love you like a set of fresh 13F's from your favorite investors.

Holdings from gurus like Mohnish Pabrai were realized over the weekend, and another flood is being released today, including those of Berkshire Hathaway.

As I sit here taking note of some of the more interesting stock picks with my favorite gel ink pen (oh how it glides so smoothly across the page!), I want to impart something I have learned through years in pursuit of life-hacker elite productivity through hi-tech gadgets and psychological nudges.

Embrace the analog.

Here is a tour of Warren Buffett's office:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoaGaz-KDaw

Where's the TI-83 calculator? Where's the computer? Not even a cordless phone? Or an ergonomic chair? It looks like Warren Buffett operates in much the same way he did when he first started out in the 1950s.

Peter Lynch, author of One Up on Wall Street, even said his most useful tool was the yellow legal pad. And Mohnish Pabrai says that if he needs to even reach for a spreadsheet to make a calculation regarding an investment, it's a sign that he should pass--value ought to be stunningly obvious. In other words, go for the low-hanging fruit.

Now I'm far from a Luddite - technology is immeasurably useful for investing and multitudes of other endeavors. But sometimes it gets in the way, rather than being a complement to productivity and thinking. Psychological research has shown that writing by hand can even get you past writer's block much quicker than typing. And there's something to be said for those old Dictaphone voice memo recorders.

If spreadsheets have become more of a chore rather than a tool, take a step back and try something a little bit new.

The humble notebook.

Hello World!

This website will explore investing (particularly in common stocks) through the filters of other disciplines like behavioral psychology, medicine, literature, and the arts. The inspiration for the title comes from Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's second-in-command at Berkshire Hathaway, who maintains that investing can be improved by having a latticework of mental models acquired through the study of other disciplines.

A true Renaissance man for our times, he studied meteorology at Caltech, graduated with a JD from Harvard Law school. He founded the famous law firm Munger, Tolles, and Olson several years before he committed to investing full time investment partnership in the 1960s--at Warren's prodding.

What's his secret? Reading. Mr. Munger says that his children call him a book with legs. It's a theme that comes up again and again when studying the lives of the guru investors. And having an understanding of other disciplines augments one's understanding of investing. Advising a group of business students on how to get ahead, Buffett said, "Read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest," as he pulled out a stack of papers from his briefcase,

Now some may maintain that all you need are financial statements. Of course, there is no substitute for reading far and wide - 10K's, 10Q's, proxies, 13F's, and then some.

And even simple, quantitative investing executed mechanically works out wonderfully over the long-term (if you haven't already, check out Joel Greenblatt's Little Book that Beats the Market for a powerful primer written so even his 5th-grade son could understand. "When money dumb money acknowledges that it is dumb, it ceases to be dumb," according to Buffett.

Though there are simple ways to beat the market, many of us enjoy the thrill of the hunt--the immeasurable joy on finding gold among the soil. For better or worse, this is one of humankind's ingrained psychological biases, which we will explore in other posts.

I hope that investors of all stripes will find something of interest here--be they value, growth, momentum value, mechanical, shameless cloners, etc.. Thank you for visiting and stay tuned for more!