Imitating great investors is the fastest and most effective way

Table of Contents

What kind of person are you?

Most people understimate the power of imitating. There are five kinds of people in this world: one is stupid, one is wise, another is wise, and the last is wise. The differences between these five types are:

Stupid person: Can’t learn anything; can only do simple, highly repetitive tasks that don’t require thinking, don’t require learning.
The average person: After many times of learning, imitation, teaching, and even failure; can finally understand and acquire a skill or lesson.
Smart person: After one pass, they will learn from their own mistakes; they can be corrected quickly.
Wise person: Many things do not need to spend the effort to experience or experience in person, you can learn from the mistakes of others.
Self-proclaimed wise person: He thinks he is very smart, but cannot be persuaded. Not only does he have no self-knowledge, but he also does not want to learn. He always thinks that he is the smartest in the world.

Everyone can see that the last type of person is the most dangerous. In the world of investment, the final fate of such a person is very likely to be bankrupt and separated from his wife and children.

Creativity is worthless on investment

Most people despise plagiarism and imitation. However, on the road of investment, what has been verified by ancestors for hundreds of years or even thousands of years, the ancient ones, and those that have been tested by long-term time, are the unchanging truths. As I’ve said time and time again: Creativity is absolutely useless when it comes to investing. Because the idea represents unproven, the feasibility is questionable, and the biggest disadvantage is that the idea itself represents a risk, and it is a great potential risk. And a high degree of risk is destined to have no good investment results.

A wise man is a master imitator

Most things in the world can’t be created from nothing

Charlie Munger told us: “No matter how smart you are, there are smart people out there who can fool you if they really want to. So, be sure you can trust the smart people you work with.” and “Without lifelong learning, you’re not going to do very well. You’re not going to get very far in life based on what you already know.” People should grasp what other people have already figured out. No one can grasp universal wisdom just by sitting down and dreaming. No one is that smart. It is reliable to grasp the knowledge that others have already sorted out. study method.

Buffett’s wise words

Buffett’s approach is to draw smarts from the smartest people, which is the biggest shortcut in investing and life. Because of the people around you, you are their average.

Buffett said: “What investors then need instead is an ability to both disregard mob fears or enthusiasms and to focus on a few simple fundamentals. A willingness to look unimaginative for a sustained period — or even to look foolish — is also essential.”

Buffett’s investment performance before he met Graham was mediocre, he ever emphasized : “My investment performance has improved significantly since 1951, but it wasn’t because I changed my diet or started exercising. The only new nutrients I added were Graham’s investment philosophy. A few hours of learning from a master far outweighs my own self-righteous naive thinking over the past 10 years.”

Persistence in the ordinary achieves greatness

Buffett said, “You don’t have to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.” Buffett believes that the best success in the workplace can come from those who are consistent. Flashy ideas and grand plans can only take you so far. In the end, the results speak for themselves.

That’s why my postscript to my book “The Rules of Super Growth Stocks Investing” with the following passage: Leo Tolstoy once said, “The deepest truths are the most mundane truths.” Carefully sail the ship for ten thousand years, be friends with time, experience the power of compound interest, gather sand into a tower, and rise from ten thousand feet to the ground, we just need a little more patience. As Waldo Emerson famously said, “He who accomplishes great things is not great in the beginning.”

Wise men are not ashamed of imitation

A truly wise man will not be ashamed of imitation, but will try his best to learn from successful people in every possible way. There are many things in life that have to be experienced in person before we can experience personal pain and learn lessons. I think most of us belong to this category. However, those with higher comprehension do not have to experience it personally, and can learn lessons or experience from the experience of others. Buffett falls into this category, and he did say something similar in this passage.

Buffett has a deeper understanding of making mistakes and how to learn from others and mistakes, as detailed in my other blog post, “Mistakes of omission and mistakes of commission“.

As Amy C. Edmondson said in Harvard Business Review: “The wisdom of learning from failure is incontrovertible….But time after time I saw that these painstaking efforts led to no real change. The reason: Those managers were thinking about failure the wrong way. Most executives I’ve talked to believe that failure is bad (of course!).“

Disclaimer

The content of this site is the author’s personal opinions and is for reference only. I am not responsible for the correctness, opinions, and immediacy of the content and information of the article. Readers must make their own judgments.
I shall not be liable for any damages or other legal liabilities for the direct or indirect losses caused by the readers’ direct or indirect reliance on and reference to the information on this site, or all the responsibilities arising therefrom, as a result of any investment behavior.