We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP765: What the World’s Great Philosophers Can Still Teach Us About Wealth and Wisdom w/ Kyle Grieve

Episode Date: November 2, 2025

On today’s episode, Kyle Grieve discusses how timeless philosophical ideas can deepen our understanding of investing and life. He explores lessons from thinkers such as Spinoza, Nietzsche, Hume, and Pascal to reveal how concepts like persistence, skepticism, and luck shape decision-making. Kyle also connects these ideas to modern investing by drawing on insights from Buffett, Voltaire, and Bruce Lee, showing how adaptability, emotional control, and inner reflection lead to better outcomes. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:18 - How Spinoza’s idea of eternity can guide timeless investing decisions 00:05:36 - The power of persistence and what conatus teaches us about successful businesses 00:07:56 - Why emotional self-mastery may be your greatest investing edge 00:10:19 - What Nietzsche and Buffett reveal about living with integrity in finance and life 00:16:30 - How Hume’s healthy skepticism leads to sharper questions and wiser decisions 00:26:01 - What Voltaire can teach us about challenging the Efficient Market Hypothesis 00:30:11 - How Blaise Pascal’s wild luck swings illuminate the role of chance in investing 00:35:52 - Why William James’s pragmatism can ground abstract financial ideas in reality 00:38:31 - How market simulations and symbols can distort or enhance our understanding 01:07:12 - What Bruce Lee’s Be Water mindset reveals about adaptability in investing Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Mastermind Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, Kyle, and the other community members. Buy Ethan’s book The Investment Philosophers here. Follow Kyle on X and LinkedIn. Related ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠books⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ mentioned in the podcast. Ad-free episodes on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Premium Feed⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. NEW TO THE SHOW? Get smarter about valuing businesses in just a few minutes each week through our newsletter, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Check out our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠We Study Billionaires Starter Packs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow our official social media accounts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X (Twitter)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Finance Tool⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Enjoy exclusive perks from our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠favorite Apps and Services⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠best business podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sponsors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Simple Mining HardBlock AnchorWatch Human Rights Foundation Linkedin Talent Solutions Vanta Unchained Onramp Netsuite Shopify Support our show by becoming a premium member! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

You're listening to TIP. Have you ever wondered what the world's greatest philosophers can teach us about the stock market? Because the truth is, investing isn't just numbers, models, or financial statements. It's about how we think. It's about how we make decisions under uncertainty, how we manage our emotions, and even how we define success in the first place. Spinoza once said that to understand something truly, we must say it in the aspect of eternity.

When we apply that to investing, it reminds us to simply. zoom out, stop obsessing over daily price moves, and start to focus on enduring value. Nietzsche challenge us to act with integrity to do what's right even when it's unpopular, a philosophy that Warren Buffett has echoed for decades. And David Hume's idea on healthy skepticism, they're the perfect antidote to the herd mentality and emotional investing that have plagued investors for decades. We'll also explore Blaise Pascal's lessons on luck, how fortunes can change in an absolute instant, and why humility might be the most underrated skill in finance. You'll learn how Voltaire's critique of blind optimism applies to the efficient market

hypothesis, and how William James philosophy of pragmatism can help us separate what's useful from what's merely theoretical. We'll even connect these ideas to the modern investing world, from how simulations and market narratives can either empower or mislead us, to why Bruce Lee's B-Water mindset can be the single best framework for adapting to changing markets. By the end of this episode, you'll see how philosophy can sharpen your thinking, calm your motions and bring clarity to your investing process, helping you not only make better decisions, but live and invest with more purpose. If you've ever felt that investing is more than just chasing returns, if you've ever wanted to understand the deeper forces that are driving your choices,

beliefs, and decision making, then this episode is for you. Now, let's get into this week's episode on what the great philosophers can teach us about the markets and life. Since 2014 and through more than 180 million downloads, we've studied the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. Now for your host, Kyle Greve. Welcome to The Investors Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Greve, and today we're going to discuss a topic that isn't particularly

heavily discussed in most investing circles. And that's a topic of philosophy. So to better help us understand the interplay of philosophy and investing, we're going to be examining the book, The Investment Philosophers, by Ethan Everett, who did an absolutely terrific job of showing just how many lessons can be drawn from philosophy to help us think about investing in different, more beneficial ways. Benjamin Graham was one of the earliest investors to actively discuss philosophy in investing lectures. According to Graham's students, Graham began teaching his courses is by saying, if you want to make money on Wall Street, you must have the proper psychological

attitude. No one expresses it better than Spinoza, the philosopher. Spinoza said you must look at things in the aspect of eternity. Now, Graham had a strong background in philosophy before he began discussing investing. So it made sense that he would draw on it to understand the investing world better. One of Spinoza's principles pertains to narratives. And that was that traditional stories made it easier for the labor. person to relate to moral teachings specifically within religion. Incredibly, Baruch Spinoza knew

the power of narratives in the 17th century. Numerous studies conducted more recently supported his premise. That storytelling is just key for activating rational and emotional pathways, engaging memory systems more fully, and fostering empathy, all of which make the embedded lesson in a story much more stickier. Now, the problem that Spinoza identified was that listening to a story was a great introduction to a teaching, but it wasn't really optimized, you know, for the highest quality level of understanding. It was more surface level. And if you wanted to truly understand principles, you had to really dig a layer deeper to get to those lessons. And that is why the book's author believed that Graham came up with the Mr. Market analogy to help the

students best understand the underlying principles and wisdom that guide the market. Now let's revisit Graham's mentioning of Spinoza and Eternity. We know the market sentiment is impermanent. It changes nearly daily. So to try to understand the market at the deepest level and transcend that impermanence, you must realize intrinsic value. This was Graham's gift to the investing world, the ability to understand what an asset was worth and separate that value from the market's opinion of it. We'll return to Spinoza shortly, but first let's go over the most valuable company that the world has ever seen. If I asked you what that company was today, you might open up your computer, search for which Meg 7 company is most valuable, or maybe just simply ask chat

GPT. As of September 8th, 2025, the most valuable company in the world is Nvidia, which is valued at around $4.2 trillion. But that's actually the incorrect choice, because the Dutch East India Company is actually the winner. At its peak valuation in 1637, the business had an inflation-adjusted market value of around $7.5 trillion. Now, why is that important? Because a gentleman named Rabbi Menace had very, very deep respect for the Dutch East India company and perhaps gained a pretty substantial portion of his wealth from owning shares in that company.

Rabbi Menacea would later become Baruch Spinoza's teacher. Now, let's dive into one of Spinoza's key lessons that we can apply to investing. So Spinoza used a term that had great important to him, Conatus, which is derived. from the Latin term for striving. Spinoza wrote, each thing, insofar as itself, endeavors to persist in its own being. You can easily argue that Canadas essentially drives everything, especially things like markets and business leaders. Now, there's no doubt that businesses ascribe to this principle. It's the core of companies to remain in business and to continue to provide their owners with an attractive investment. Once the business is no longer appealing, the asset loses its value and may one day

become worthless. Now, the driving force of a company is Canadas, which strives to maintain its competitive advantages and positioning, and to avoid losing those attributes to the forces of capitalism. Spinoza outlined two types of striving. Number one, the striving of the whole of nature. And number two, the striving in individual things to maintain and preserve their own existence. Now, the important lesson here is that the two types of striving can very, very easily be misaligned. The book outlines an example inside of a business. So the individual units within a company, such as a lower level employee, the CEO and the shareholders may all have different objectives that they're striving for. Lower level employees want a good job and good pay.

Shareholders want a good return on their investment. And CEOs might be more concerned with just building a good reputation for the next job that they have in mind. A CEO that's more concerned with building an empire can easily do this at the expense of both the employees. employees and the shareholders. Now, I think you see this happen pretty often, and it's a big reason why it's vital to find management that is very well aligned with shareholders. And great businesses will help make their employee shareholders as well. A company like Consolation Software, Topicus, or Lumine have incredible incentives for employees

all across the board. When they create value, they are rewarded with shares on the open market that stay in escrow for three to five years. This creates exceptional alignment. When you have all three parties aligned, then you get a lot of money. a better chance of making sure that the principle of Conatus is benefiting the whole and that the individual parts of that hole are mutually benefiting from improvement. Spinoza's second lesson concerns the power of emotion, which often do more harm than good to investors. It's important

to understand that bad ideas can corrupt Conatus. And these bad ideas tend to stem from irrational emotions. Spinoza wrote, the term bondage is appropriate for man's lack of power to control and check the emotions. For a man at the mercy of his emotions is not his own master, but is subject to fortune in whose power he so lies that he is often compelled, although he sees the better course to pursue the worse. We are all emotional to some degree, but the best investors can exercise some control over their emotions through observing themselves. Spinoza's underlying lessons for combating the deleterious forces of our emotions is just to understand them very clearly make them known to us, which then allows us to have some degree of control over them and avoid them

becoming passive emotions. Now I own a business called Simply Sovereignty Concentrates, which I sold in full. With that position, my emotions were just all over the place. When I first bought it, I was really impressed with management. I thought they were doing a great job of consolidating the fragmented cannabis industry in Canada, but my emotions changed significantly for a few reasons. So first was that there was an acquisition that they had planned, which fell through. And that really, spooked the market. And then they made a significant accounting adjustment, which hurt their financials. When the deal kind of fell through, I had a note in my journal that I looked back in preparation for this episode. And it said that I was happily surprised by the price drop because

I felt like it was a decent opportunity to buy more shares. But I also noted that this might be a mistake. Then, three weeks later, when it was known that the accounting had changed significantly due to the auditors, I angrily wrote that I had failed to understand revenue recognition well enough and ended up selling all of my shares. Now, here my emotions harmed me in terms of seeing the opportunity to pick up shares when the price dropped and then helped me sell out of a business where I think I just had very little faith in the company's ability to return to normalcy and prove that I just didn't understand the business well enough to account for this outcome. Time will tell if this was a mistake or was the right move. Had I had a better grasp of my emotions when,

and the initial uncertainty of that material adverse condition arose, I probably would have stayed away from adding shares. After all, I don't think I had enough data to put more money behind that idea. That would have meant I lost less money, which is really a pyrrhic victory. Now, speaking of victories in life, we can still be victorious or defeated, not only by the outcomes, but also by the process. And this process is often hidden from public view. This leads nicely to our next philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Don't worry, I'll circle back on this in due time. Now, Nietzsche proposed an interesting thought experiment, which he called the eternal recurrence. Imagine your approach by a demon who tells you, this life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will

have to live once more and innumerable times more. And there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you and in the same succession and sequence. Now, if we use this thought experiment on ourselves, there's probably going to be a lot of questions we'd have to ask to make sure that we lived an extraordinary life. After all, it would be repeated eternally. We'd probably prefer a life full of joy rather than a life full of pain. Now, knowing this, we'd be much more thoughtful in how we act and consider the long-term consequences of all of our actions. Listening to this, you might already be connecting the dots to how

Buffett has lived his life with an inner scorecard. He focuses more on what he knew was right on the inside versus doing what might appear right on the outside but just feels wrong on the inside. So why did Nietzsche teach us to think this way? The moral lessons of Nietzsche's time were underpinned by religious philosophy. This system relied on the use of reward and punishment to encourage people to act morally. If you did wrong, you were damned for eternity in hell. And if you you did right, you were blessed with eternal life in heaven. But Nietzsche disagreed with this incentive system. Nietzsche felt that dangling these incentives in front of people to inspire moral actions can only bring about actions that themselves are not moral, since they will only be

performed out of the self-interest of those performing them. Now, this does a great job of shining a light on specifically why Buffett plays such a high importance on his inner versus out of scorecard. Both Nietzsche and Buffett believed that there was a battle between how people acted outwardly and how they felt within. In Buffett's case, just because something was considered legal or a well-known business practice did not mean that it was the right thing to do. A good example of this is when Buffett took over as the interim chairman of the Solomon Brothers after their treasury bidding scandal. So Buffett, who was already a large shareholder, came in to try to improve the poor image that Solomon Brothers had had. And while he was in charge, he said a great line that I think really highlighted his process. Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding.

Lose a shredder reputation for the firm and I will be ruthless. While many inside Solomon felt they could generate more revenue for the company, Buffett believed that some of those approaches were just in kind of gray areas, which prompted him to say this quote as a warning to employees to make sure they weren't doing anything that would harm Solomon's reputation. It didn't matter if it was considered legal or not. not. In Berkshire's 2010 annual reported shareholders, Buffett writes, we must continue to measure every act against not only what is legal, but also what we would be happy to have written about

on the front page of a national newspaper in an article written by an unfriendly but intelligent reporter. Sometimes your associates will say, everybody else is doing it. This rationale is almost always a bad one if it is the main justification for a business action. It is totally unacceptable when evaluating a moral decision. Whenever somebody offers that phrase as a rationale, in effect, they're saying that they can't come up with a good reason. If anyone gives this explanation, tell them to try using it with a reporter or a judge

and see how far it gets them. If you see anything whose propriety or legality causes you to hesitate, be sure to give me a call. However, it's very likely that if given course of action evokes such hesitation, it's just too close to the line and should be abandoned. There's plenty of money to be made in the same. center of the court. If it's questionable, whether some action is close to the line, just assume

it's outside and forget it. Now, we've discussed the similarities of Nietzsche's and Buffett's thoughts on morality. Now let's turn to success and their thoughts on living a good life. Neither Nietzsche nor Buffett believed a person's success should be measured by their wealth. Buffett says that if you get into your 90s and nobody thinks well of you, the size of your bank account doesn't matter and your life is just a disaster. Nietzsche said, are you accomplices, in the current folly of the nations, the folly of wanting above all to produce as much as possible and to become as rich as possible? What you ought to do, rather, is to hold up to them the counter-reckoning. How great a sum of inner value is thrown away in pursuit of this external goal?

Nietzsche also lived in a time when speculation was running absolutely rampant in Germany. So in 1869, 72 firms traded on the Berlin Stock Exchange. In 1871, following the unification of Germany, Prussia's corporate statute was adopted nationwide, leading to an increase in publicly traded stocks. By 1873, the number of stocks expanded to 441 companies, making up 25% of Germany's GDP. However, over the following decade, sentiment really shifted as the euphoria started to wear off, and the number of listed companies decreased to 387. So Nietzsche observed the money that was made and lost by speculators in the stock market.

during this time. Nietzsche referred to many of the actions that he saw as a legalized fraud and speculation. This is a subject that Buffett has endlessly discussed and his stance is completely in agreement with Nietzsche's. As with all speculation, we often judge the result that people get from an outward view. The media highlights the overnight millionaires, but refuses to discuss the amount of risk that speculators took. Nietzsche and Buffett suggests that you look inward to observe whether the way you create value is the right or wrong approach, because even a good outcome can be the product of a flawed internal process. Now, if you invest long enough, chances are that you're going to own a stock that maybe eventually is going to be part of some sort of bubble. So no matter what

stocks you own, you must always look at the price and value and aim to be skeptical of where the price is after it appreciates to a very high degree. Skepticism is an excellent tool for combating the inner demon of greed. But can we have too much skepticism? This is a question that David Hume can help us answer. So Hume thought of skepticism in two primary ways. One, healthy skepticism and two, excessive skepticism. Luckily, if you have a healthy dose of healthy skepticism, Hume believed that it would self-correct for any excessive skepticism that might be lingering around. Now, excessive skepticism, if you're wondering, is to argue from the opposite of everything mindlessly. The problem with excessive skepticism is in the word blind. If you blindly argue, you will never reach a helpful

conclusion. Hume writes, for here is the chief and most confounding objection to excessive skepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it, while it remains in its full force and vigor. He need only ask such a skeptic what his meaning is, and what he proposes by all these curious researches. He is immediately a strand and knows not what to answer. His philosophy will not be beneficial to society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge anything, that all human life must perish where principles universally and steadily to prevail. Now, the key to skepticism is to remain skeptical, but not allow yourself to become excessively skeptical. The way to utilize healthy skepticism is by injecting some common sense and

reflecting into your thinking processes. While common sense may not be the most refined type of sense that you can get, it more than suffices for a healthy dose of skepticism. Now the question becomes, how do we use skepticism to become better investors? As an investor, I know that a business's stock will go up when the market starts to form a perception of a company that aligns with my hypothesis. Sometimes this can take longer and sometimes this can take shorter, but it will happen eventually. Should I concern myself with trying to persuade the market to take my stance? Hume once wrote a letter to Adam Smith, where he discussed the importance of relying on a few capable people to examine his work.

I think this is a great way to look at investing, and it's one of the biggest reasons that I've gotten so much out of our TIP mastermind community. I can share my ideas with people who will intelligently look at the business and give me honest feedback on maybe where I'm overlooking something. However, the key Hume was discussing here was the need to filter your ideas. through high quality filters. If you seek consensus from those who have low quality opinions, they're just not going to be nearly as useful as someone who you can trust and who understands the business in question

at a much deeper level. Hume believed that the consensus was actually a good feedback mechanism to be extra skeptical of our own assertions. Perhaps that's why many more traditional value investors are just so eager to sell their winners when price and value converge. The problem with chasing people down to agree with you comes down to emotions. When you have a consensus, it's easy to allow emotions to cloud your judgment or let your guard down. And when your guard is down, that's when you're most likely to get comfortable, think irrationally,

and make some pretty costly mistakes. But here's what Buffett thought about comfort and investing. We derive no comfort because important people, vocal people, or a great number of people agree with us. Nor do we derive comfort if they don't. A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought. When we really sit back with a smile on our face is when we really sit back with a smile on our face is when we run into a situation that we can understand, where the facts are ascertainable and clear, and the course of action, obvious. In that case, whether conventional or unconventional,

whether others agree or disagree, we feel we're progressing in a conservative manner. The point here is that being a contrarian or skeptical can be a great thing. However, there's one more key to being a contrarian that matters greatly, and that is that you're correct on your contrarian opinion. Excessive skepticism can lead to holding incorrect contrarian opinions and investing these types of views are basically a death sentence. Michael Steinhart claimed that being contrarian was easy. Anybody can do it. But the key to being a good investor was to be a good contrarian who was also right in their judgment. When you can think differently from the market, make a bet and then be correct, that's where the big money lies. How are Marx gives some of his best advice possible in how to utilize

skepticism in investing? If we are skeptical, we should take an opposite view of the consensus at extreme times. During extreme euphoria, the herd deploys all its cash into increasingly more expensive opportunities, hoping to find more easy home runs. The skeptic will sell their overpriced stocks and start hoarding cash. The skeptic will believe the market is expensive and participating in an overly hot market is likely to result in a loss rather than a game. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right, I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future.

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All right. Back to the show. During extreme fear, the herd sells much of their holdings and hoards cash out of fear that the market will continue to go downwards. The skeptic may either accept temporary losses and wait until the market sentiment improves, or they may just deploy all their cash into all the cheap opportunities that are now available to them. You can see here that the skeptic is taking part in healthy skepticism. They're intelligently viewing where price and value is disconnected, then they rashly make decisions based on their observation of the market as a whole. Hume teaches us to strike a balance between open-minded doubt and practical decision-making,

a lesson that's just essential for investors navigating a very volatile market. Yet, even with this balance, another challenge remains, which is our tendency to cling to conforming beliefs, even when the evidence changes. This is where Voltaire steps in, helping us confront the stubborn optimism and confirmation bias that often appear in investing. So one of Voltaire's books, Candida, is a literary classic that is a tale focused on a key psychological bias that every human has. And that's our inability to change our beliefs or decisions despite overwhelming evidence that contradicts our initial assumption. Everett circles back to Voltaire's key concepts regarding investing, discussing it through the lens of, the efficient market hypothesis. Now, believers in the efficient market hypothesis believe that

zero work needs to be done in investing other than to just hold an index because people are incapable of beating the index. Efficient market hypothesis provides an assurance to believers in efficient market hypothesis. Now, when you think about it for a few moments, it's actually pretty comfortable assurance for index investors. I'm totally fine with index investors, but to say that there aren't investors out there that can beat the index just seems dishonest. To me, the people saying investors can't beat the index are investors who either, A, don't wish to put the work into attempting to understand numerous businesses that could provide superior returns compared to an index, or B, they're just incapable of having an edge in the market. And I think the first

option really relies on honesty. Many investors fall into this category, which is perfectly fine. Not everyone enjoys reading financial statements and thoroughly learning about a specific business. However, you get some investors who clearly cannot beat the index and therefore become the index themselves over time. I've seen this with a few funds, whereas they scale, it is no longer outperform simply because they diversify their position so much and they just try to mirror an index rather than have any differentiating factors. And differentiating yourself is the only way to outperform the index. Everett writes, as opposed to believing that the world is governed by some divine provenance that ensures everything happens for the best, Voltaire believes that the

modern world is largely shaped by human-built institutions that affect history's outcomes. It is the nature and structure of those institutions along with the good or bad traits of the people constituting those institutions that ultimately shape our lives. Now, an institution that Voltaire believed was highly influential was the stock market. The stock exchange is a powerful symbol of both evil and greed, yet also embodies numerous positive aspects. While some people believe the stock market is evil due to the greed that it fosters, they overlooks many of its positives. The stock exchange does many great things for society. A few things off the top of my head. They provide companies access to capital, which allows for growth, which often means

more jobs available and higher tax dollars that are paid to the government. The stock exchange can bring people together from diverse backgrounds and it allows the average person to access the upside of owning a great business. The last part on Voltaire, I'll mention reminds me of Morgan Housels's the psychology of money. So Voltaire writes, we have no other conscience than what is created in us by the spear of the age, by example and by our own disposition and reflections. Man is born without principles, but with the faculty of receiving them, his natural disposition will incline him to either cruelty or kindness. So how we are raised and the social institutions that we're a part of all heavily influence how we may act in the market. This illustrates why some investors with a propensity for gambling

might opt to use leverage and trade to maximize their profits just as quickly as possible. Or why people who maybe were raised to be distrustful of institutions may not believe in other institutions that are trustworthy to those who were maybe brought up to be trusting of those institutions. This is a fascinating concept because it can open our eyes to why others might act or invest in ways that just feel nonsensical to us. Knowing this allows us to be introspective about why we do things the way we do and why we may making errors. Hume taught us about skepticism and Voltaire showed us that we should think about how to apply our thinking to the outside world. But now we're going to focus on looking inward

at ourselves as investors. And to look inwards, the book's author chose one of my favorite characters from history, Blaise Pascal. Now why did he choose Pascal? Pascal, along with Pierre de Fermat, laid the groundwork for thinking about how luck influences our daily lives. Or as ever it puts it, how much we have contributed to our investment success and failures. It's easy for people to assume that their success was a product of skill, but in reality, much of their success is a product of pure, blind luck. Pascal helped show us why that was through mathematics. If you'd like to know more about his equation, please check out WSB 701, where I discuss it in much more detail. But one of Pascal's lesser-known narratives, which I've never actually

heard of before reading this book, was from an essay that he wrote titled Discourses on the condition of the Great. Now, Blaise Pascal's father's Etienne placed an interesting financial wager in 1634 on the French government bonds. And this bet actually paid off very handsomely. In the years following the investment, Etienne and his family were able to live comfortably off the income from this investment enjoying a very luxurious lifestyle. But only four years later, the investment was sour and young Blaise Pascal was highly impacted by the loss of his family's fortune.

What happened to the bonds shows that investments and especially bonds are never truly risk-free. The Chief Minister of France decided that the government should actually default on these bonds to help fund the 30 years war. And as a result of that default, the bond's value was essentially wiped out. Blaze learned that fortunes can change in an instant. And a life of modest means could easily replace a life of luxury if someone's luck were to shift. Everett writes, He understood that since the slightest change in fortune could lead to undeserved harms or benefits for anyone, all rich people exist under a significant degree of conditionality.

Now, this is a fascinating insight because it showed Blaze that wealth was not a product of pure skill, but also a product of luck. And just as a wealthy person could be seen as being skilled, the unwealthy could be seeing as having a lack of skill. However, his point in both scenarios was that luck played a significant role in part in these outcomes rather than solely relying on skill. Pascal wrote a short passage in which she asked the readers to imagine themselves in this scenario. So you're a sailor of low means. and you find that the ship that you're on is falling apart underneath you in the sea. You are the lone survivor of your boat and you find yourself awakening on the shore of an unknown island in a faraway land. As you spit out saltwater and sand, you spot a group of the island's inhabitants looking actually more like admiring you while they walk towards you.

The people pepper you with gifts and services that are just fit for a king. You learn that their king went missing shortly before you arrived and that you very closely resemble the king. You're smart enough to put two and two together and conclude that they are treating you as their king strictly because you bear a remarkable appearance to their real king. But as time goes by, the truth begins to weigh on you. While everyone in the kingdom believes you to be their king and treats you as such, you know that you are just a man of lowly means and no titles. As you reflect, you realize that you are no true king.

The only reason that you're being treated as such is based purely on luck. proper appearance, proper time, and right place. None of these factors were within your control, yet you are living a life that you never deemed possible. This short story is an excellent parable about the role of chance and circumstance and how they can shape one status or fortune quickly and easily. Just as the man's kingship was a product of chance rather than merit, our position, whether that be in wealth, birth, or social standing, are often also the result of random

events that are entirely out of our control. This principle aligns well with Buffett's quote about being born in America at the time that he was and how he felt that he had won the ovarian lottery. Now, how do we circle this to investing? By helping to infuse a degree of humility into our investing process, by accepting that much of the success in investing is a product of a mixture of luck and skill, and not allowing ourselves to get too high on our successes or too low on our failures. I often think about luck in my own journey towards TIP. I'm just very fortunate. I could honestly say that there was never a point in my life where I thought I'd be on a podcast talking about finance as my vocation.

I was fortunate to discover crypto. I got lucky that I failed miserably in that experience. I was again fortunate to rediscover investing, which COVID provided me with the opportunity to do. I was blessed to discover value investing rather than adopting some sort of leverage approach. I was again fortunate to be the type of person who loves to learn and already developed a passion for writing to help educate others, which in turn made me better at learning things myself. I got lucky that my co-host Clay read some of my writings and that it resonated with them. And I was lucky to be invited onto one of TIP's communities and that Stig listened to that chat.

And I was very fortunate to be just a great fit with TIP, as I know that TIP is a good fit for only a very small minority of people. Now, even with investing, I wonder if my entire track record is just a matter of luck. I'm often the right person looking at the right opportunity at the right time. Now, I believe that investing skill allows serendipity to play a part. And without skill, you're probably closing yourself off to that opportunity for serendipity. So when I wonder if my track record is pure luck or not, I'm always brought back to reality that the truth is probably somewhere between luck and skill. And I'm perfectly fine with that. Now, the thing about luck is that it can be perceived as an abstract concept.

While we know it's there, it's pretty tricky, if not impossible, to measure it. definitively. Now, we can't allow abstractions to cloud our judgment too much. To learn more about abstractions, the book turns to William James, one of the foremost experts on pragmatism, a philosophical concept that resonates very deeply with me. Pragmatism resonates with me because it's easy to take abstract ideas that just have no real life use. Things like the efficient market hypothesis or the capital allocation pricing model are two that really jump out to me. While the academic community welcomes them, they're often shunned by investors who, actually invest and make money for themselves and their partners.

I'd rather align myself with the pragmatists who find use for concepts. Here's what James writes in one of his books, the meaning of truth regarding vicious abstractionism. Let me give the name of vicious abstractionism to a way of using concepts which may thus be described. We conceive a concrete situation by singling out some salient and important feature in it and classing it under that. Then, instead of adding to its previous character,

all the positive consequences which the new way of conceiving it may bring, we proceed to use our concepts privatively, reducing the originally rich phenomenon to the naked suggestion of the name abstractly taken, treating it as a cause of nothing but that concept, and acting as if all other characters from out of which the concept is abstracted were expunged. Abstraction functioning in this way becomes a means to arrest far more than a means of advance in thought. It mutilates things, creates difficulties, and finds impossibilities. His primary point is that abstractions are valuable tools, but only when we remember that they're shortcuts and not the whole picture. Too often, we treat abstractions as the entire picture, and this really just

distorts our reality and limits our understanding. One example that comes to mind when thinking of vicious abstractionism is a categorization of value stocks versus growth stocks. Many investors will categorized stocks into one bucket or another, completely ignoring relevant facts. Let's say a value investor finds a business trading at a P.E. of five. He classifies it as a value stock, does his due diligence and determines that it's still a decent investment because it's cheap. But if we zoom out, this investor might be ignoring the bigger picture of concepts, such as, you know, the business's declining industry, the poor management that the business has, a weak competitive position inside of its industry, weak competitive advantages, the ability to be

disrupted and maybe even a very poor history of capital allocation. Now, in this sense, the label of value is just mutilizing this investor's reality. It's hiding several additional risks and complexities behind a simple concept. While I think simplicity is definitely the key to investing, it's vital not to oversimplify things like investing. Now, continuing with the subject of abstractions, we look at simulations. While simulations are abstractions, they are an essential tool to use in investing, especially when evaluating a specific business. No matter how you think a business's narrative will play out, there is always a simulation that could occur, that is much worse or much better than what you expect. In this sense, simulations are a great way to help you

understand how risky an investment might be. Now, Everett chose the French philosopher Jean-Baudouillard to help us understand the concept of simulation. Everett writes, when Boldurierre writes about simulation, he is referring to representations of a real-world process and systems via different modalities. Now, what Bojillard was getting at was that signs and symbols impact the world beyond their basic use values of standing in as signifiers for a signified idea. Bozriard writes, as I saw it, in that the world of signs, they very quickly broke away from their use to enter into play in correspondence with one another. Or to put another way, these signs and symbols can shift from representing an underlying idea to taking a life of their own. Bolto-Yard refers to these signs and symbols that take on a life of their own as simulacra. Now, there are three orders of simulacra.

There's first order simulacra, which is a clear counterfeit of the underlying object or idea that they reflect. Then there's second order simulacra, which are representations which blur the boundaries between a reflection and what is being reflected. And there's third order simulacra, which are representations that take on an existence completely independent of the underlying object or idea that's being reflected. Confused? I was too, but let's just use an example here to help clarify things. So Everett provides some excellent examples of simulacra in public equity markets. So the first is a tracking stock, which is an example of a first order simulacra.

So a tracking stock's value is tied to how well a specified division of a. company performs. AT&T did this for a while. However, owning a tracking stock doesn't mean you actually own that particular division of the company. It simply reflects the performance of that division. The real thing is the division's actual business and the simulacrum is a tracking stock, which mirrors the division's results in the stock market, but is not the business itself. Next is second order simulacra. We can look at common stock ownership as a great example here. When you own a business's common stock, you receive ownership and voting rights. However, there is a blurred reality regarding the differences between common stock and the

company's physical business operations. For instance, a company might increase their profits by 15% per year with no dilution. If there are no blurring between a business's fundamentals and its stock price, then the stock price should also steadily rise by exactly 15% per year. However, the average stock price fluctuates significantly with a peak to trough range of about 50%. This clearly shows how a common stock can be disconnected from reality nearly all of the time. Now finally, we get to third order simulacra. The example in the book was the meme stock mania, and I don't think I could come up with a better example myself. So in this case, a meme stock,

such as game stock, becomes completely disconnected from reality and takes on a life of its own. In the case of meme stocks, their share price become completely detached from reality. If you look behind the curtains of the GameStop example, numerous things, were happening in the background, including attempts to sabotage short sellers intentionally. This short squeeze helped propel the share price, which had very little to do with the business's fundamentals or value. Everett writes, Buzzardard is emphasizing that while signs, in our case, meme stocks may have previously served passive roles of reflecting certain underlying objects or ideas, they can ultimately detach from those underlying objects or ideas and go on to be exchanged

among themselves in an independent virtual realm of their own. Boulder-Villard drew some notable contrast between two significant stock market crashes that he experienced. So there was a 1929 crash and Black Monday in 1987. So in the 1929 crash, there wasn't much of a blurred line between the stock market and reality. The economy crashed, and as a result, public stocks were affected. But when you look at Black Monday, the events precipitating the crash were utterly different. In 1987, there was no obvious catalyst to justify a 22.6% drop in the stock market in a single day. While reading about Baltriard in this chapter, I couldn't help but be reminded of George Soros' concept of reflexivity.

So I wasn't really surprised to see that Ethan Everett directly mentioned Soros in the book in this exact chapter. The idea of reflexivity is that stock prices are not just passive reflections. They are active ingredients in a process in which both the stock price and the fourth, of the companies whose stocks are traded are determined. The simplest way to think about this is that if a business is perceived positively by the market, it can drastically change the strategy and outcome for that business. The easiest way to understand this is to think of a company's cost of capital. If a business is trading below its intrinsic value, then issuing shares of its stock to raise

capital to grow is just not a good idea. But if a company's shares are above intrinsic value, then using the company's shares to develop is a great idea and produces quite a lot of value. But the problem is that the company has limited control over what the stock market thinks about its shares. Sometimes a company will be categorized, for instance, as like, say, let's say an AI stock. Therefore, any association can help the business increase its share price, which can aid in raising capital for future growth and expansion.

So reflexivity works well when you have a view on the market's perception of a business. Now, all this discussion on the abstract and simulations is interesting. when thinking about things going on in the world that are specifically external. However, it's also vital to consider what's going on inside of our own minds. This is where we spend, you know, most of our time after all. And to do this, we're going to turn to Arthur Schopenhauer, a philosopher that I admittedly know very little about. Schopenhauer has one compelling concept.

As much as we spend time in our own heads, planning out our lives and smoothly idealizing ourselves in this abstract, the fact of the matter is that reality contains all sorts of ugly bumps in the road on the path to significant success. The main takeaway from the simple concept is that we just live kind of a dual life. That first life is in the concrete or in reality and the second life is in the abstract. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination.

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slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right. Back to the show. One way that some investors identify as a form of abstraction is as a gambler. While gambling generally has a negative connotation in society, I can't help but think about all the really good investors that I've heard of who have gambled at some point in their life and have pointed to that experience as something that enriched their investing process and didn't actually act as a detriment. Charlie Munger is the first person that comes to my mind, but the book mentions David Einhorn.

So let's go with him. Now, Einhorn used his experience playing poker to help shape his reality as an investor. For instance, he realized in poker that you don't play or win every hand and that you sometimes have to play hands that you may. might not think are the greatest simply because you have an edge over someone else at the table. So when he makes an investment, he tends to follow general principles, but he will go outside of these principles if he sees the right opportunity. Now when observing luck, Ihorn realizes that good luck comes and goes. In a poker tournament, you can play perfect poker and lose. This is because poker is a game of both skill and luck. The profits will always go to the people with most

skill in the long term, but in the short term, luck guides a lot of the outcome. This is especially apparent in poker because you must play a significant amount of hands to see your actual results. Now, I personally played online poker very regularly for a little over a year. And in that year, I played about 200,000 hands. I know this because I had tracking software. A poker player going to the casino and playing live games might play, you know, maybe 20 hands for an hour.

So for them to obtain the same sample size that I did would take approximately 10,000 hours. Now the point here is that sample size matters. If I were to go to the casino and play for a few hours, I might get 100 hands in. In that small sample size, anything can really happen. I can go broke or I can multiply my money. But when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of hands, you can easily see if you have an edge or not. And to anyone wondering, I don't think I had much of an edge. Now, how did Einhorn use this principle for investing? To help him realize that in reality, his stock picks won't always go the way he wants them to. Instead of, making poor and irrational decisions going on tilt, as poker players would say. When you lose,

just accept that as part of the game of investing and carry on. I like this case study in looking at an investor and seeing what part of their life in the abstract they're able to really pull into reality and use successfully. It's a great tool to use on yourself, to reflect on where you observe strength and weakness in your own investing process. My favorite way of doing this is to simply look at investments that you've made that have been the most and least successful. then spend some time thinking about them while you made them in the first place, then draw wisdom as to how you can double down on your successes while improving or avoiding on your mistakes. In this case, we want to reflect on our identities to figure out if the identities that we are aligning

ourselves with are helping or detracting from our success in investing and in life. One interesting thing that I learned while researching the world's best investors was just how many of the successful investors have had very rocky marital lives or relationships with their children. And this can obviously wear on them very much and massively affect their levels of happiness. It's important to remember that it's nearly impossible to have a long, successful track record investing and not become wealthy. But even swelling wealth cannot fix poor relationships with loved ones. So in that sense, money cannot always buy happiness, despite the widespread belief that money is a solution to many people's problems.

Now, the creator of the essay itself, Michel de Montaigne, once spoke about how wealth created more problems and solutions for him. He concluded that the more wealth he had, the more anxious that he became about things like theft, troughs of the random, and the fear of losing it. He felt that owning money brought just more troubles than earning it. Now, Montagna came to this conclusion while thinking deeply about his relationships with money and how it affected him. Interestingly, there were some people in his time that thought that thinking of yourself

was vain and unproductive. And while Montaigne agreed that thinking of yourself solely as self-agulation and aggrandizement was indeed vain and unproductive, you shouldn't overlook the positive aspects of self-reflection. Everett writes, if we go about it from the perspective that we are often an enigma to ourselves and need to spend time in self-reflection to get to know ourselves better, we can significantly improve our human condition. Where many of the investors from my co-host William Green's book, Richer Wise, Happier, defer from some of the unhappy ultra-rich is that they invested into intangibles that could never

be stripped away from them, regardless of the number of zeros that they had in their bank accounts. Montaena believed that true wealth wasn't just owning tangible possessions, but rather wealth that existed outside of the world of contingency, which cannot be affected by gains or losses in fortune. This is why being truly happy with what you have is such a good measurement of happiness. If you are genuinely content with what you have, then you can have no more. material goods and still be the wealthiest person in the world. It's an interesting notion and probably very difficult to achieve with complete honesty, but I think it's a good goal to strive for. One incredible way of observing if what you do makes you happy is to just answer a fascinating

question that was posed by Soren Kierkegaard. And that is, would you pay to do what you do today? It's an interesting question because I don't think of that many people have ever posed it to themselves. And if they did, what percentage of people do you think would say yes? My guess, maybe five or ten percent. Before we dive more into that, let's cover Kierkegaard in some more detail. Now, Kierkegaard lived a pretty interesting life and experienced wealth and money losing ventures. The book outlines one of his first financial dilemmas. This occurred when he went to university. So while in university, Kierkegaard was given an allotment of cash to use at his own discretion. He ended up spending a significant amount of that cash on luxuries.

But his love of luxuries was actually larger than the amount of money that was allotted to him and he ended up having to dip into credit to cover his costs. By 1837, he found himself in an absolute financial mess. Since he knew his father had the money to help him erase his debts, he begged him to help bail him out. Less than a year later, his father ended up passing away, leaving Soren a very large inheritance. But it actually appears that between the death of his father in 1838, and the time that he graduated with the master's degree in theology in 1841, that something shifted in him.

He now had the means to continue living a life of luxury if he wanted, but he felt that the society around him had an alarming fascination with money and he didn't want to take part. So in his book, Two Ages, the Age of Revolution and the present age, he notes ultimately the object of desire is money, but it is in fact token money, an empty abstraction. Ultimately, Kierkegaard spent the rest of his life funding the printing of his books, many of which did not sell well.

He also self-published pamphlets against a church, and he pretty much died without anything to speak of. But let's go over the initial question that I posed a few moments ago here. Kierkegaard felt that the pursuit of money as a goal itself is a very exciting concept. And I think Ethan did an exceptional job connecting this to investors in today's markets. So Ethan writes, essentially, it is these investors love for the process of forming investment thesis and watching those investment fecese play out that drive them, not the pursuit of money itself. As soon as I read this, it just kind of got me thinking.

Ever it connects the love of investing to a game like chess. So chess grandmasters don't want to get good at chess because they are going to make a lot of money from it. They do it because they just love chess. And they love the ability to use chess as a vessel for proving their intellectual and strategic abilities at a world-class level. Then I examines myself, so I've always loved video games. And through my life, there are probably two games I think I've loved the most.

So the first was Madden, a game based on American football, and the second was Starcraft, a real-time strategy game. I spent many, many hours playing these games so many that it's probably embarrassing to even discuss it with you today. But I played those games because there was a high degree of strategy and my brain had to be operating at a very high degree to execute my strategy. my strategy. That was my big draw. I never wanted to make money from them and I never did, but I played purely for love of the game. Now, when I reflected a little bit about investing,

it's really not that different. I don't worry much about what other people are doing. I mostly just focus on if I'm doing the best possible job that I can do. And if it's a decent job, the secondary benefits of making money is a very good second prize. But the verification that I achieve a great intellectual victory is probably the biggest prize that I get from investing. Kierkegaard said that in ancient Greece, people had to pay to serve as a magistrate. By the same tokens, Kierkegaard did pay significant sums just to be an author. He spent money to do it, and even when he wasn't successful in making any money, simply because he loved writing and he felt his concepts were worth sharing with the world.

Now I get back to the question. And since most people listening to this podcast are investors, the question stands, would you pay to continue investing your own money in the market? Since our audience is probably not a good representation of the overall population, as many of our listeners, I think, would enthusiastically reply yes to this question. Maybe I'm asking the wrong cohort of people. So let's let Ethan Everett describe the answer for professional investors. For most people in Wall Street, there can be minor interesting parts in their work, but the reality is that their only major goal is money as an object. Thus, they would be nowhere near Wall Street without the monetary incentive.

When I think of my own investing journey, there are many parts of my trip, as a matter of fact, all of it that have been paid by myself. All the subscriptions I paid for, the books, the subsec accounts, articles, news, software services, and time spent have been paid by me out of pocket just so I could find interesting investing ideas that I thought offered significant upside, limited downside, and intellectual satisfaction. Then I just have sat back and watched to see what happens. Sometimes I'm wrong and it hurts, but more often than not, I'm right and I've been rewarded.

The hard part about investing is that being right is often equated with making money. And in the long run, I agree with that statement. I challenge you to find a business that has, let's say, over the past decade grown revenue by 10% per annum, per share profits over 15% has no debt, is incredibly well managed, is a monopoly, and easily has another decade to go where the stock price hasn't at least matched that growth in EPS. But in the short term, things are a little bit murkier. In 1900, Samuel Langley was seen as the man most would have bet on to create the first powered airplane. Langley was a well-known scientist.

He had funding from the U.S. government. He had the best connections. He had access to the most intelligent engineers. And he had support of the nation due to the media coverage that was surrounding his mission. By 1903, Langley's aircraft, the aerodrome, made its public debut with great fanfare and a significant media presence from the Potomac River. It took off twice, and each time it immediately nosedived into the river. The media heavily mocked him, and he quit trying to make a powered airplane just then and there.

Now, in the same year, Orville and Wilbur Wright, two bike mechanics with no formal education, no funding, and no prestige launched their first successful flight. The process was iterative. With each failure, they got one step closer to success. And when they successfully launched their first flight, barely anybody noticed. They weren't inundated with reporters, there was no fanfare, and there was no instantaneous reward to be found. The great stoic philosopher Seneca said one of my favorite quotes of all time, time reveals truth.

And this applies directly to the story about the first successful flight. Sometimes the successes are nearly impossible to identify, and obvious wins are the ones that become the duds. Only time will reveal the truth. Now, in investing, it's hard to focus on the long term when there are things like charts, flashing lights, apps, and alerts that keep us focused on the short term. Yet humans continue to believe that they can make money in the markets by finding stock ideas solely by looking at stock charts and drawing a few lines.

Now, Albert Kameas can help us answer this question of why we seek meaning and patterns in areas where they just don't really exist. Kamus was a Nobel Prize winner in literature in 1957. He lived a life similar to many of the philosophers that we've covered of both being part of poverty and wealth. One of KAMIS's best philosophical contributions with something called absurdism. So this philosophy stresses the importance

of recognizing the randomness in our lives, as well as the positive effects of embracing the absurdity of our struggle to find meaning in an inherently meaningless world. The point is that it's human nature to search for meaning in the world around us, but often the meaning that we find is purely illusory. Like a stock chart, if you look at Wiggles on a stock chart

and conclude that as a result of how that chart looks now, the lines are just going to keep going up, you're looking for meaning in, frankly, a meaningless pattern. This is a potent lesson for investors. Even if you are a fundamentals-based investor like me, there are specific patterns that I may erroneously conclude have led me to be right or to be wrong. I had a great discussion today with the TIP mastermind community where one member brought up that I, Kyle, have a rule against buying Chinese equities, completely true. He pointed out that my reluctance to buy Chinese stocks might be the result of losing money on my Chinese investments rather than errors on my analytical abilities.

He pointed out that perhaps I was making an error based on resulting and confusing it for mistakes on my analysis. And this is actually a pretty excellent point. I pointed out that funny enough, all the stocks that I had actually sold in China have actually gone up in price over the past few years. But I haven't spent too much time looking at the fundamentals of those businesses. Perhaps my conclusion was based on me looking at specific patterns that didn't actually exist to come to an irrational conclusion. So I looked a little more closely at the basket of bets I made in China, which were on Alibaba, Tencent, and Kufant. And the business have actually improved a little bit on fundamentals. So while I may not have made the worst possible decisions with these Chinese bets, perhaps it was all just a matter of bad timing.

Had I waited for these businesses to be selling at heavy discounts before buying them, I might have had a completely different outlook on Chinese equities. This is why Camus's focus on absurdism is just so crucial. You want to take lessons from information that actually provides meaning and to skip the rest. Now imagine it's 2008. And you're Ken Langone, the billionaire philanthropist who helped fund Home Depot in its early days. This annoying guy, Bernie Madoff, just keeps trying to get a hold of you. And he says that he wants to meet and he has an interesting business proposition for you. You take the meeting.

At the meeting, Madoff delivers a 19-page pitch deck. He tells you that he's not offering this. deal to his current clients. Puzzled, you ask why Madoff is only offering you this deal. And Madoff responds that the deal isn't big enough to give to all of his existing clients. So he's only offering it to you. Your gut tells you that this deal is just no good. Your positive business experience in life tell you that you want to do business with people who should prioritize their current relationships. If this Madoff fellow has a great deal, it just makes no sense to offer it to a stranger rather than to his own investors, whom he has

worked with previously and whom he reportedly has done absolute miracles for. You take a pass. Two weeks later, Bernie Madoz's multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme was discovered. What the story shows us is that in a deal, it matters not what both sides are getting out of it, but also how it's affecting hidden parties. In this case, Langone didn't like the deal simply because he didn't want to do business with someone who wouldn't bring a cinch of a deal to his own investors before presenting it to a stranger. Scruing over the people that you do know to do a deal with a stranger just wasn't how Langone did business. He was a people person who highly valued relationships. Now, a philosopher named Martin Buber has a concept that perfectly explains Langone's deeply held skepticism on this deal.

Buber's concept is highly esoteric. So the name of it is I you and his counterpart is I it. Buber's philosophy is based on how we relate to the world and to others. So in an I-it-relate, relationship, we treat the other person or thing as merely an object, something that can be used, analyzed, or acted upon. There isn't anything inherently immoral or wrong about it. It's just very impersonal. When looking at a business, we might focus just on the financial statements to decide whether we want to invest in it. The opposite of an I-It relationship is an I-U relationship. Here, the person is viewed as a whole, being rather than an object. We want to engage with them authentically, fully recognizing them with presence and respect. Now, the difference between the two

alters how we treat others and alters who we truly are. Because the I and I it is much different than the I and I you, every moment that we interact with the world, we choose to see others as objects with no inherent value or as fellow subjects with their own significance and meaning. Bernie Madoff saw Langone as an object using an I-It view. He was someone who could potentially be just a source of cash and someone who probably would never even see that money again. Langone took an IU view. He considered the deal good, but since Madoff had others in his web, who should have been prioritized over Langone, it just didn't sit well with Langone. For me, the biggest lesson here reminds me of the great Buffett quote, which is companies get the shareholders that they deserve.

If a company treats its shareholders as a source of cash to be tapped whenever needed, chances are, it's just not going to have a very loyal shareholder base. If instead you treat your shareholders like true partners are honest and transparent with them and have aligned incentives, you're likely to have shareholders who are going to stick with the business through thick and thin. And when you have a strong shareholder base, there's tangible benefits to it. Companies will find it much easier to secure funding when their share price is stronger. And when the markets tumble, they're likely to have a more resilient share price, allowing them to act countercyclically, which further improves the value of the business. The final investor that Ever chose is my personal favorite. And that man is Bruce Lee.

As a teenager growing up, I was obsessed with Bruce Lee. I had all of his films on DVD, and I watched them on repeat. At that time, I was primarily interested in Bruce Lee because he was great in his movies and had a physique that I wanted to emulate. But I also enjoyed listening to him on YouTube. He gave great interviews, and nearly all of them turned into some sort of philosophical lesson connecting life with martial arts. The two quotes that he said that have always resonated with me are one, empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.

You put it into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. Be water, my friend. And two, absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own. So the first quote emphasizes adaptability and flexibility while avoiding rigidity. If I may quickly relate this to one of my passions in life, Jiu-Jitsu before relating it to investing. So whenever I look back to when I was brand new to Jitsu, there was a high degree of rigidity in my body when I would do Jiu-Jitsu. And that's because when you lack skills in a physical sport, the easiest thing to rely on is your athleticism and strength. So novices think that they could just muscle

their way out of everything. This has two big downsides. The first is that proper technique easily trumps strength. This is why a decently trained 100-pound girl can easily break a male bodybuilder's arm who might weigh 180 pounds. Second, when you rely solely on your muscles to defend yourself and move, you very quickly get exhausted. Once you can rely more and more on your skill set and strategy, you magically become less tired. In investing, it's easy to get rigid in your strategy. We can easily label ourselves as value investors trying to emulate someone like Ben Graham, and in that process, we forget that the world has changed a lot since his day. Ridgidly focusing on businesses with assets and assuming intangibles are worth nothing, forces investors to overlook

large areas of the market that are ripe with opportunity. Of course, you can be rigid in many areas of investing. I, for one, have a pretty significant dislike for technical analysis as I never wanted to identify as a trader after my abysmal experience is trading crypto. But I allow myself to look at charts now and then just to use them as a source of information to help place bids on businesses that I may want to add to my portfolio. And even though I fear that those bids will never get filled, I'm always pleasantly surprised by how often the market will bid down a business that I really like and by how technical analysis helped me land shares at an excellent price. Now, the second quote here is excellent. It's a great way to look at how you do anything. I think most listeners of

the show are people who are trying to improve. And the simple notion of absorbing what is useful while discarding the rest is just a great and simple framework. That is basically what learning is. You find things that work for you, adapt them into your framework, and when things don't work out, you throw them out, then rinse and repeat. It's actually the last part of this quote that fascinates me the most. Add what is uniquely your own. This is where your own preferences and create creativity come in handy. You get to choose whether you resonate with something, then add or subtract it from your strategy. In sports, a quarterback like Lamar Jackson is known not only as a great passer, but also as a player who is absolutely electric on the ground, thanks to the physical gifts

that he has with his legs. In investing, you can pick and choose, you know, what you want to invest in, stocks, bonds, real estate, crypto, alternatives, etc. You can look at your position sizing, your holding periods, how much you turn over your portfolio, whether to be more short, medium, long-term oriented, what kind of industries you want to invest in, what market cap quartiles or deciles you prefer, the quality of the business and the manager, and just so many more other preferences and variables. The list here is really endless. And if you get to know a really good investor, well, you're going to see that no two investors are complete carbon copies of each other. And that's because you can add your own flair to your strategy and make it uniquely your own.

It's why I think investing is so fun and why I think you can learn so much from different people. Even though I will never be as concentrated as an investor as Charlie Munger, I learned a great deal from him about his thinking processes. And even though I have zero interest in cheap cigar butts like Benjamin Graham, I learned so much from his margin of safety principle and his Mr. Markin analogy. And even though I have zero interest in bonds, I've learned everything I know about risk from Howard Marks. So I think that's why it's essential to keep an open mind, just like Bruce Lee would say. You never know what valuable insights you're going to learn from the most unlikely place. but if you remain a closed book, you prevent yourself from learning things that could provide you with massive improvements in your wealth. That's all I have for you today. If you want to keep the conversation going, shoot me a follow on Twitter at IrrationalMR KTS or connect with me on LinkedIn. Just search for Kyle Greif.

I'm always open to feedback. So please feel free to share how I can make this podcast even better for you. Thanks for listening and see you next time. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow We Study Billionaires on your first. favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only, before making any decision consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.