Dont get drunk of own ideas
Sep 2020

Hello Investor,

In 1966, Frank Blackmore of Transport Research Laboratory in UK designed modern traffic roundabout. Their design was highly accurate to decongest traffic considerably.

However, successfully implemented & operated in UK, It took another 30 years for US & Europe to widely accept & execute roundabouts in their traffic congested roads. In other words, it took 30 years of resistance & unwillingness for them to accept what others have discovered.

‘We are drunk of our own ideas’ which makes acceptance hard to new ideas.

We feel superior for our own ideas not matter how rational and meaningful other ideas are. To overcome, we have to step back & examine quality of our ideas to check whether own ideas in last 10-20 years were truly outstanding? Were we able to build riches from this ideas?

This applies with modern day equity investors. While having invested little time is studying past trends and performance they come up with ideas of their own specifics. However, that turns out to be their individual opinion and which may or may not come true. But with this, they become slaves of their own ill-researched philosophy which is hard to leave behind.

Hopping from Mutual Fund to Equity shares to PMS to alternate fund to commodities to precious metals, Investors think they are optimizing their returns but let me tell you that they are all same asset classes and equally volatile.

We have to learn from the past experience and put it for better use in future. We should remain adaptive to changing environment and act on it much before it is widely accepted.