Recortes de reflexiones sobre el mundo de los mercados y el dinero

No es la información, es como la usas

"Resulta extremadamente difícil, sobre todo para un especulador relativamente inexperto, actuar y comprar en contra del consenso general cuando los colegas ,los amigos, los medios de masas y los expertos aconsejan vender.

Incluso aquéllos que conocen esta teoría y desean seguirla cambian su opinión en el último momento bajo la presión de la psicosis de la masa y dicen: "Teóricamente debería entrar ahora, pero esta vez la situación es diferente". Más tarde se confirma que también esta vez hubiera sido mejor actuar "anticíclicamente".

Hay que entrenar mucho, ser frío e incluso cínico para eludir la histeria de la masa. Ésta es la conditio sine qua non para el éxito. Por este motivo solo una minoría especula con éxito en la bolsa. Por lo tanto, el especulador debe ser valiente, comprometido y sabio. Incluso debería ser arrogante. Debería decirse a sí mismo: "Yo lo sé y todos los demás son tontos"

André Kostolany

Why are experts inferior to algorithms? One reason, which Meehl suspected, is that experts try to be clever, think outside the box, and consider complex combinations of features in making their predictions. Complexity may work in the odd case, but more often than not it reduces validity. Simple combinations of features are better. Several studies have shown that human decision makers are inferior to a prediction formula even when they are given the score suggested by the formula! They feel that they can overrule the formula because they have additional information about the case, but they are wrong more often than not. According to Meehl, there are few circumstances under which it is a good idea to substitute judgment for a formula. In a famous thought experiment, he described a formula that predicts whether a particular person will go to the movies tonight and noted that it is proper to disregard the formula if information is received that the individual broke a leg today. The name “broken-leg rule” has stuck. The point, of course, is that broken legs are very rare— as well as decisive.

Daniel Kahneman - Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow

I'm convinced that it's the cultural memory of the 1929 Crash more than any other single factor that continues to keep millions of investors away from stocks and attracts them to bonds and to money-market accounts. Sixty years later, the Crash is still scaring people out of stocks, including people in my generation who weren't even born in 1929.

If this is a post-Crash trauma syndrome we suffer from, it's been very costly. All the people who've kept their money in bonds, money-market accounts, savings accounts or CDs to avoid being involved in another Crash have missed out on 60 years of stock-market gains and have suffered the ravages of inflation, which over time has done more damage to their wealth than another crash would have done, had they experienced one.

Peter Lynch - Beating the Street

“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.”

@nntabeb

"Comencé a darme cuenta de que el gran dinero debe estar, necesariamente, en las grandes oscilaciones. Sea lo que sea, lo que dé el impulso inicial a una oscilación grande, el hecho es que su continuación no es el resultado de las manipulaciones a través de encuestas o artificios financieros, sino que depende de las condiciones básicas impulsadas por las fuerzas principales."

Jesse Livermore