Thursday, August 14, 2014

Investing Tips from Jim Rogers and Jim Chanos

Investing tips from investing titans

First the legendary Jim Rogers (from the Financial Post)
“Most successful investors, in fact, do nothing most of the time.”
“If you want to make a lot of money, resist diversification.”
“It is remarkable how many people mistake a bull market for brains.
“On Wall Street there’s no truer adage than …’markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.'”
“No matter what we all know today, it’s not going to be true in 10 or 15 years.”
“If you want to be lucky, do your homework.”
“Swim your own races.”
“If the world economy gets better, commodities are very good place to be in … even if the world economy does not improve, commodities are still a fabulous place to be.”
“The most sensible skill that I can give to somebody born in 2003 is a perfect command of Mandarin.”
“Become a Chinese farmer, that’s what you should do.”
“If you can find ways to invest in Myanmar, you will be very, very rich over the next 20, 30, 40 years.”
“India is not a place for investors, but it’s a fabulous country for tourists”
“I don’t know any way to short either Harvard or Stanford.”
“I was poor once, I didn’t like it, I don’t want to be poor again”

In my opinion when Mr. Roger says "No matter what we all know today, it’s not going to be true in 10 or 15 years". He should apply the same word of caution on his views of China and or to Myanmar or to anywhere else.

Now to the famous short selling artist Jim Chanos (from Business insider) [ht financial post]

On Chinese politics: 
"When the leaders are all billionaires we must say that the Marxist-Leninist ideology has maybe been watered down a bit, sometimes with pigs in it."
Being a one of the strident China bear, Mr Chanos rebuts a Tu-quoque fallacy  
"'Mr. Chanos has never been to mainland China.' Well hell, I didn't work at Enron either."
On Chinese growth 
"It's the accounting tail wagging the economic dog."
On Chinese government statistics: 
"I'm not the only guy crying in the wilderness about the data coming out of China."
On Chiina’s banking system 
"The Chinese banking system is built on quicksand."
On investing research: 
"Primary research is crucial and not as many people do it as you think."
Also, do it on bottom up manner: 
"Nothing beats starting with source documents."
On conflict of interest: 
"The biggest mistake people make is being co-opted by management."
The role of short sellers: 
"The most important function that fundamental short sellers bring to the market is that they are real time financial detectives."
The intertemporal value of long term insights: 
"In investing, you can be really right but temporarily quite wrong."
Valuation matters: 
"Some of the best short ideas can look cheap from a valuation standpoint."
Spotting major errors: 
"We try to focus on businesses where something is going wrong."
Value versus shorts: 
"There’s a big difference between a long-focused value investor and a good short-seller."
On independent thinking: 
"You need to be able to weather being told you’re wrong all the time."
On Dubai’s bubble: 
"Go to Dubai and see what happened. It was…what I call it the 'Edifice complex'."
On monetary policies: 
"If everyone knows you're going to print money ... you know ... welcome to Zimbabwe."
On US and Europe’s economic problems: 
"We keep kicking the can down the road. But maybe now we're at the point where the can is kicking back"
On what I usually write about as the agency problem in the financial world: 
On being a broker: “They’re not interested in truth or what’s best for the client, but in making the sale with the least amount of work.”
On Noise versus signals: 
"Though I listen to the noise to make sure there’s no new information that I need to know, I don’t worry about most of it."
On government interventions: 
"Beware of the law of unintended consequences"
On the role of luck: 
"A lot of what happens in your life is merely serendipitous and really just luck."
A career advise: 
"If you ever have an idea and you think you need to take career risk to accomplish it, do it early in your career."




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