Brilliantly written!! Loosing focus from ones successful business can also have parallels in portfolio concentration. For example do I need that additional "cool" company in my portfolio to divert the attention of my limited resources i.e time and capital? Am I not better off to focus on whats in my portfolio and whats working?
Thank you Anand for sharing your learnings from your long investing experience through such well written essays! It has helped me reduce a lot of mistakes in my investing journey!
Thanks Anand, have been reading your articles for the past two years, and it has helped me immensely.
One of the great piece that I have read on ,' investments ', is the Charles Ellis article on, ' Why Investment is a losers game ", and how making lesser mistakes can always help one optimise returns. Your insights just help me add more stuff to my list of what not to do .
Yesterday I see someone recommended you for interview with Vishal Khandelwal. Then I see many people mentioned there. Then I start searching with your name and come the you 7 essay. Then from Yesterday I am just reading continuously. Hats off to you very clearly thinking knowledge. You words are looks like holy grail of investing book. And really thought provoking for new investors.
Very well articulated, Anand. I accidentally bumped into your blog and it has stayed with me ever since.
It has been my personal experience that not scoring a self-goal / making a mistake is way more important than putting in massive efforts towards identifying & plucking a rare winner from a garden of exciting but impostor businesses. Unfortunately, doing the same thing that's been doing well for donkeys years is boring. However, excitement can come at a very high cost (yes, opportunity cost is rarely visible).
Thanks once again for reiterating and putting it up beautifully!
We humans are like businesses too. I could relate a lot of this with human lives and our core competencies, and the distracting endeavours that we choose to pursue. I have been guilty of few such endeavours in the past, but I constantly try to not shift my focus from the chosen path. This has been a wonderful read. Thank you
Nice article n have learned some new pointers. After reading 'Honeymoon from hell' section from article, now I can correlate why Nalanda exited their positions from Thyrocare n Just dail completely!
Amazing post as usual! Focus on "focus" on "core" in entire article with nice humble advise to business owner as well as fellow investors. Thanks for your post, keep posting.
There's a lot of merit in what you say, but there are exceptions, I have been part of one: SRF. And I am playing another just now: UPL. Both flout all your rules, yet have created extraordinary value by learning new businesses, or integrating up or down the value chain. I think the critical differentiator is the Learning Systems that underlie the business culture, the eye for detail and the decentralisation of decision-making. And how the pieces gel with each other. In case of SRF, global leadership was built up one by one, while in case of UPL, it is about occupying the links of the value chain.
The problem though may be more nuanced. Doing nothing and letting compounding work its magic sounds like the best option, but i wonder if its colored by Survivorship Bias.
Only a handful articles/books have a material impact in shaping one's investment philosophy. This is one of them. Thank you for this.🖖
Brilliantly written!! Loosing focus from ones successful business can also have parallels in portfolio concentration. For example do I need that additional "cool" company in my portfolio to divert the attention of my limited resources i.e time and capital? Am I not better off to focus on whats in my portfolio and whats working?
Thank you Anand for sharing your learnings from your long investing experience through such well written essays! It has helped me reduce a lot of mistakes in my investing journey!
Thanks Anand, have been reading your articles for the past two years, and it has helped me immensely.
One of the great piece that I have read on ,' investments ', is the Charles Ellis article on, ' Why Investment is a losers game ", and how making lesser mistakes can always help one optimise returns. Your insights just help me add more stuff to my list of what not to do .
Thanks for being so magnanimous.
you should write a book on investing - it will be a best-seller, more importantly it will be a great learning for a lot of us about investing.
Yesterday I see someone recommended you for interview with Vishal Khandelwal. Then I see many people mentioned there. Then I start searching with your name and come the you 7 essay. Then from Yesterday I am just reading continuously. Hats off to you very clearly thinking knowledge. You words are looks like holy grail of investing book. And really thought provoking for new investors.
Flying Spicejet - nice touch :) Great Read, as always!
Very well articulated, Anand. I accidentally bumped into your blog and it has stayed with me ever since.
It has been my personal experience that not scoring a self-goal / making a mistake is way more important than putting in massive efforts towards identifying & plucking a rare winner from a garden of exciting but impostor businesses. Unfortunately, doing the same thing that's been doing well for donkeys years is boring. However, excitement can come at a very high cost (yes, opportunity cost is rarely visible).
Thanks once again for reiterating and putting it up beautifully!
We humans are like businesses too. I could relate a lot of this with human lives and our core competencies, and the distracting endeavours that we choose to pursue. I have been guilty of few such endeavours in the past, but I constantly try to not shift my focus from the chosen path. This has been a wonderful read. Thank you
Too good.
Nice article n have learned some new pointers. After reading 'Honeymoon from hell' section from article, now I can correlate why Nalanda exited their positions from Thyrocare n Just dail completely!
Amazing post as usual! Focus on "focus" on "core" in entire article with nice humble advise to business owner as well as fellow investors. Thanks for your post, keep posting.
Thank you Anand -- well written.
I really liked about the value-add versus damage control as it helps to reinforce our responsibility to the businesses where we have invested.
Aptly written Anand and fully agree with your thoughts. I’ve tried to avoid these mistakes but still ended up making many!
There's a lot of merit in what you say, but there are exceptions, I have been part of one: SRF. And I am playing another just now: UPL. Both flout all your rules, yet have created extraordinary value by learning new businesses, or integrating up or down the value chain. I think the critical differentiator is the Learning Systems that underlie the business culture, the eye for detail and the decentralisation of decision-making. And how the pieces gel with each other. In case of SRF, global leadership was built up one by one, while in case of UPL, it is about occupying the links of the value chain.
Fantastic Read and Great arguments!
The problem though may be more nuanced. Doing nothing and letting compounding work its magic sounds like the best option, but i wonder if its colored by Survivorship Bias.