Hey folks -
I finished another timed 10k run this Sunday. While my target was to finish it in under 54 minutes, I ended up taking 2 extra minutes. I have a running thread of all the timed running events I am participating in. You can follow it here.
In other news, I have started posting reels on Instagram consistently. You can check it out here.
📰 Most News Is Useless
A news item in the TV or newspaper will only report what has happened in the past. Other times, then engage in forecasting. Nothing is of any use when it comes to the equity markets. Markets have a direction of their own, which is generally upwards. Here is a news item from 2013 where S&P warned that India could get a junk status warning. We all know where we are now :)
Pat Dorsey, a Chicago-based hedge fund manager, expresses a similar view. “The single best thing any investor can do is to not have a TV and a Bloomberg terminal in their office,” he once told me. “That I have to walk fifty feet down the hall to look at stock prices or check the news on our portfolio is great. It’s so tempting. It’s like checking email obsessively: you get a little dopamine rush. But as we all know logically and rationally, it’s utterly nonproductive.”
🪙 31 Lessons About Money
Ryan Holiday is one of the best writers and thinkers out there today. He shares some amazing lessons he has learnt about money. Some of the ones I liked -
My work is unpredictable, and even success comes in the form of lump payments. So when it comes to savings and investing, I have always favored things that are dependable. My wife and I invested quite a bit in different real estate things over the years, with the idea being to eventually create enough annual income that we could be independent from my creative/entrepreneurial/artistic decisions. This strategy is not for everyone, but it worked for us. I could stop writing tomorrow and know the spigot isn’t going to be turned off.
If you don’t take the money, they can’t tell you what to do. That’s what Bill Cunningham said: If they pay you, they get to tell you what to do. Remember his words: “Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty, freedom is the most expensive.”
I’ve had the privilege of talking to many, many extremely wealthy people. They are not that rare. Rarer is the one who actually likes what they do for a living (for instance, half the ones I meet all seem like they’d rather be writing books for some crazy reason). Rarest is the one you’d want to trade places with.
You work really hard to get money…and then once you have it you spend time worrying whether you’re putting it to work right. James Altucher once pointed out that you don’t have to make your money grow. You can just have it. It can just sit there. You can spend it. Whatever. You don’t have to whip yourself for not investing and carefully managing every penny. The reward for success should not be that you’re constantly stressed that you’re not doing enough to “capitalize” on that success.
If you can, pick up the check. If you can, tip amply. It feels good, it’s nice, it also normalizes not sweating small amounts of money.
If it makes you a worse person (parent, neighbor, writer, whatever), it’s not success. If starting a business makes you a worse person—if it stresses you out, if it tears your relationships apart, if it makes you bitter or frustrated with people—then it doesn’t matter how much money it makes or external praise it receives. It’s not successful.
🔱 Even God Would Be Fired
🥇 Is Gold Really An Inflation Hedge?
The world loves gold. For two reasons apparently - it provides a hedge against inflation, and acts as a safe haven to park money when the world is in turmoil. However, the evidence suggests something else -
While gold might protect against inflation in the very long run, 10 or 20 years is not the long run. And there is no evidence that gold acts as a hedge against currency risk.
As to being a safe haven, Erb and Harvey noted in their study: “In the shorter run, gold is a volatile investment which is capable and likely to overshoot or undershoot any notion of fair value.” Evidence of gold’s short-term volatility is that over the 17-year period 2006-2022, the annual standard deviation of the iShares Gold Trust ETF (IAU), at 17.2 percent, was higher than the 15.6 percent annual standard deviation of Vanguard’s 500 Index Investor Fund (VFINX). In addition, it experienced a maximum drawdown of almost 43 percent—safe havens don’t experience losses of that magnitude.
🫶 The Most Important Thing - Trust
There are multiple people who have been invested in the Berkshire stock for decades. Despite the stock falling for more than 50% thrice. Why? It’s largely because of the trust people placed in Buffet.
✍️ Quote Of The Week
“There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.” JK Rowling
🤦 Meme Of The Week
My personal blog - nirajdugar.com
Get in touch for financial planning - niraj@holisticwealth.in
Work website - Holistic Wealth
Twitter - contliving
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