As a Matter of Fact.....
May 17, 2024
As with most things, mastery takes time. One important element of investing is making sure you get the "facts". At TMM, we believe facts are important, but insufficient to make you a complete investors. That's why we include personality assessments and understanding in our courses.
We often hear in topics of conversation, the line "well as a matter of fact......" which generally aims to dispel any debate about said fact. No need to think about it. A fact is a fact.
When it comes to investing, we can present you with the "facts", however, many don't just accept facts, because it takes time for those facts to soak in and become "known". By known, I mean deep in the body type of known where it is unconscious, not actively thought about, and so at some point the logical fact becomes the intuitive.
Unless that is, they don't accord with our own individual biases. Watch two political opponents debate any single "fact". Pretty soon, you realise it's not a fact like 1+1=2. Even 1+1=2 is debatable.
But how much can you take in at any one time? How many concepts or "defining facts" can we absorb before we can move to the next one. Are facts isolated? I mean how many facts can we absorb if they are random facts, not connected in any way?
That is why we have 8 principles which we believe are the defining principles/facts when it comes to investing. They are the very basics that everything else about investing is built upon.
It is why we have the investing concepts - yes they are facts, but you need context and experience dealing with them to make them part of your investing DNA. You need evidence of their proof over time.
That's where patience comes in - for both the teacher and student. The teacher needs patience, not with the student, but with the understanding that you can't teach investing in one session, or these days in one Tik Tok video. How does a teacher find the exact pace at which each individual student can absorb the new information before moving on to the next part?
This blog post could quickly turn into a monologue of considerable size if I didn't think of the capacity of the audience.
As a 25 year investor, and as many of you know, I can talk without notes for at least 30 minutes on mean reversion or market cycles and connect it to the other 7 principles (so sorry I can waffle a bit). But this would be pointless for most students because it is simply information overload regardless of how fascinating the subject matter is or the enthusiasm level of the student.
That is why teaching can be difficult with some statements applying to the whole audience, but each student has their own pace and level of understanding and interprets the statement differently.
Young people, who are generally in a hurry ask "What's the point"? As if making the point leads to understanding. It doesn't. Points or facts alone mean nothing. They must be put together to form a coherent logical story.
The critical ingredient is time - time to think and allow those individual facts to seep into your DNA to form a coherent logical story.
Most of those who have achieved a certain level of success whether in sport or other facets of life understand that facts remain true over time AND at any single point in time.
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