The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 22 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Zweig: The best investors often possess an autistic-spectrum emotional detachment
“A lot of the best investors Have that sort of touch of something on the autistic spectrum. It's a little bit of detachment from other people's emotions that enables them to stand back and look and observe what other people are feeling and say, that's funny. Wh…”
Zweig: Venture capital valuations ramp up without properly accounting for dilution
“They set their own valuations, and there's also a disturbing wrinkle in that the valuations sort of as a new round of capital comes in that ramps up the valuation without accounting for dilution the same way you would in a public company. And I think that's ve…”
Charlie Munger told Zweig he fears the loss of media oligopolies
“Charlie Munger told me last year when I was at the Daily Journal meeting in Los Angeles that he really fears for the future of the Republic, as he puts it that newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times no longer have the, I guess I would s…”
Zweig: Institutional investors were completely sidelined during the 2008 financial crisis
“And, you know, the last time individual investors could Have a powerful valid answer to those questions was during the 2008, 2009 crisis when institutional investors were completely sidelined. Because they could not summon the liquidity in the midst of massive…”
Zweig: Trading is hubris; trading less generates fewer opportunities for error
“Trading is an act of hubris, and the less you trade, the fewer opportunities for error you generate over time.”
Zweig: The best investors are inversely emotional, not unemotional
“I think the best investors are not unemotional. I think they're inversely emotional.”
Zweig: Insular VC social circles breed more toxic excess than public markets
“In some ways, a smaller social circle of people all doing the same thing can be maybe more of a toxic breeding ground for excess enthusiasm than even a public market can, because they're all talking to each other. They're all talking to each other all day long…”
Zweig: Financial columnists repeat the same advice 100 times a year
“I once defined my job as saying the exact same thing between 50 and a hundred times a year in such a way that neither my editors nor my readers will know I'm repeating myself.”
Zweig: The media's biggest challenge is signaling information reliability to consumers
“Well, I think the biggest challenge that journalism and the information businesses face, ah, over the coming decade is actually the same one that the information consuming public faces, which is how to sort out the wheat from the chaff, how to deliver high qua…”
Zweig: Ignore commentators who state beliefs without showing their sourcing
“And if someone is telling me I believe X, or I'm, I have concluded Y, then I want to see how do you know X, and why do you believe Y? And if the person is not telling you that, then you probably should move on, because you have no way of independently or readi…”
Zweig: Satirizing a pitch is the ultimate measure of your skepticism
“One of the things I've been thinking about ever since I wrote the book is that the ability to define a term that you're presented with in business or in life in such a way as to make it cynical and funny is sort of the ultimate measure of your own skepticism. …”
Zweig: Bull market investors mistake rising portfolios for rising IQs
“A period of rising prices that leads many investors to believe that their IQ has risen at least as much As the market value of their portfolios. After the inevitable fall in prices, they will learn that both increases were temporary.”
Zweig: An investor's default position should always be to do nothing
“And the default position for any investor should always be to do nothing. Because it doesn't cost anything to do nothing.”
Zweig: Risk is the gap between what investors think they know
“In the end, risk is the gap between what investors think they know and what they end up learning about their investments, about the financial markets, and about themselves.”
Zweig: The single most important question about anything is its base rate
“The single most important question to ask about almost anything is what is the base rate?”
Zweig: The average historical return for retail IPO buyers is rotten
“Instead of letting somebody tell you it's the next Google, you have to ask yourself, what's the average experience of people who have bought IPOs? The answer is it's rotten.”
Zweig: Investors can dampen emotional volatility by controlling their information exposure
“You can't Turn yourself into someone who's unemotional, but you can turn down the amplitude of your own emotions if you change what your exposures are.”
Zweig: Shattering people's belief in a just world fundamentally alters behavior
“When you strip people of the illusion that the world is just, you change their outlook on just about everything.”
Zweig: Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary is America's most cynical book
“The Devil's Dictionary, which is far and away the most cynical, sarcastic, satirical book ever written in America, and is probably unrivaled in English language literature by anything except the work of Jonathan Swift.”
Zweig: Bertrand Russell is one of Warren Buffett's intellectual heroes
“Skeptical essays by Bertrand Russell, who wrote some of the best who was one of the best writers of the 20th century, as well as one of the clearest thinkers, and his hero, Warren Buffett's.”
Zweig: Paul Slovic is the top authority on risk perception
“Paul is a psychologist at the University of Oregon who runs a company, a nonprofit company called Decision Research, and Paul Is arguably the world's most eminent authority on the perception of risk”
Zweig never reads about investing or business when outside the office
“Well, when I'm not in the office I do have a rule, which I try never to break. I'm pretty resolute about it. I will not read anything related to investing or the financial markets or business, for that matter, when I'm not in the office. And I, every once in a…”