The ‘No Trump’ Rule
In an op-ed at The Wall Street Journal, Joseph Epstein writes about how people can’t stop talking about Donald Trump: Every Friday I meet for lunch with three or four friends from high school days. I instituted at these lunches what I called the No Trump Rule: ‘No’ not in the sense of being against […]
Charlie Munger on Why Size is a Disadvantage for Berksire Hathaway
At the Daily Journal Corporation Annual Shareholders’ Meeting 2018 (14-Feb-2018,) Charlie Munger opined about the size of Berkshire Hathaway and the disadvantages it imparts on its success: Berkshire succeeded because there were very few big errors… there were like no big errors, really big. And there were a considerable number of successes. All of which […]
Risk Is Not a Single Number
Seth Klarman’s extraordinary and mysterious book Margin of Safety, Risk Averse Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor has sold for $700 for used varieties with newer copies going for $2,500 to $4,000. His foremost investing premise is risk mitigation. He writes, Rather, risk is a perception in each investor’s mind that results from analysis of […]
Sitting Still
Richard Holloway writes in A Little History of Religion, Buddhism is a practice not a creed. It is something to do rather than something to believe. The key to its effectiveness is controlling the restless craving mind through meditation. By sitting still and watching how they breathe, by meditating on a word or a flower, […]
Everything You Do Matters
Jordan Peterson addresses “The Necessity of Virtue,” I think that people come to the conclusion that life is meaningless because that’s a better conclusion to come to than the reverse. Because if life is meaningless, well then, who cares what you do. But if life is meaningful, if what you do really matters, everything you […]
Emptiness Is Not What You Expect
William S. Cobb in Reflections on the Game of Go: The Empty Board: Emptiness refers to the absence of something that, for some reason, one expects to find—as when we say a glass, normally used to hold liquids, is empty even though it is full of air. The point is not that there is nothing […]
Many Kisses, Few Miracles
Warren Buffet writes in Berkshire Hathaway’s 1981 Annual Report, Many managers were apparently overexposed in impressionable childhood years to the story in which the imprisoned, handsome prince is released from the toad’s body by a kiss from the beautiful princess. They are certain that the managerial kiss will do wonders for the profitability of the […]
The Power of Acceptance
Pema Chodron in When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times: In practicing meditation, we’re not trying to live up to some kind of ideal—quite the opposite. We’re just being with our experience, whatever it is. If our experience is that sometimes we have some sort of perspective, and sometimes we have none, then […]
Aristophanes Rarely Philosophizes
Scottish writer, playwright and translator Kenneth McLeish writes in The Theatre of Aristophanes, Like Aeschylus, Aristophanes rarely philosophizes, rarely explains: philosophy and explanation vibrate in the actions and words themselves. In both artists, the polished intellectuality and elegant pattern-making of Sophocles or Euripides are replaced by rawness, illogicality, feeling itself. Our interest focuses not so […]
Price Matters
Seth Klarman’s extraordinary and mysterious book Margin of Safety, Risk Averse Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor has sold for $700 for used varieties with newer copies going for $2,500 to $4,000. His foremost investing premise is risk mitigation. He writes, Since transacting at the right price is critical, trading is central to value-investment success. […]