History and math. Those were my favorite subjects growing up. Still are, mostly. The math I do is very basic compared what I learned. History hasn’t changed. There’s something about the past – where we came from and how we got here – that is always intriguing.
I came across this the other day in The Snowball:
I would get these papers from 1929. I couldn’t get enough of it. I read everything – not just the business and the stock-market stories. History is interesting, and there is something about history in a newspaper, just seeing a place, the stories, even the ads, everything. It takes you into a different world, told by somebody who was an eyewitness, and you are really in that time. – Warren Buffett
This is why I’d rather dig up 100 year old books or articles from 1932 then wade through all the noise written today.
And if you dig long enough (or smart enough) you find similar stories and the same good advice gets repeated over and over, like this excerpt from a book published in 1888:
If it is difficult to make money – a proposition about which there will not be much diversity of opinion – it is in most cases even more difficult to keep it profitably employed. Men of prudence and skill in the acquisition of capital often show astonishing recklessness in the disposition they make of it. The strangest caprices take possession of them when it comes to the critical choice of investment. And as riches are always clothed with folded wings ready to expand at the most un-looked-for exigencies, it is not much wonder that they frequently take to the winds and pass beyond recall. – The Art of Investing
Sadly, I do look at the ads too.
Of course, it helps that time filters out all the noise.
Last Call
- The Pot-Belly of Ignorance – S. Parrish
- The Most Overlooked Trait of Investing Success – M. Housel
- The Art Is Not in Making Money, But in Keeping It – A Teachable Moment
- Five Lessons from Peter Lynch – Latticework
- The 3 Most Important Questions in Investing – Pension Partners
- How WD-40 Created a Learning-Obsessed Culture – HBR
- The Dizzying Grandeur of 21st-Century Agriculture – NY Times
- You Should’ve Kept Your Mickey Mantle Cards – WSJ
