The Eight Great Traits 13fat one; don’t flail away at all the wild, crazy noise in the market.
That is discipline. Hence his suggestion that each new investor be
given a card with 20 punches on it. He believes that each investor
will probably only have 20 or so great ideas in a lifetime of invest-
ing. So, wait for them.
Lynch admits that in his career he has fallen off his path several
times. He says that he’s fallen for about 30 whisper stock recom-
mendations. (These are the mysterious phone calls where someone
whispers the name of a hot stock. Lynch comments: “Don’t they
realize that the SEC can amplify these conversations?”) In any event,
all of these stocks went bad for Lynch, reminding him yet again
that he needed to stick with his strategy of extensively researching
the management and business and learning the “story” behind the
stock.- DEPTH: THINKING IN FOCUS AND INDEPENDENTLY
The French mathematician Pascal once remarked that most of
the world’s troubles are caused by the inability of men to sit qui-
etly in a room. This dictum can be applied to many investment
analysts. How many of us can shut the door and think deeply and
independently, rather than falling under the influence of what oth-
ers say? The trait of depth acknowledges the importance of such
thinking. Soros is known to permit no distractions when he is
working. He is said to have unremitting concentration. It is this
sort of focus that allows him to develop and implement winning
trading strategies.
Similarly, Richard Feynman, the Nobel prizewinner mentioned
earlier, made the same request when he started teaching physics
after his work in Los Alamos on the atom bomb. He asked for
several hours of uninterrupted time each morning so that he could
think deeply and do the kind of thought experiments that Einstein
had already made famous.02 ware 13 1/19/01, 12:59 PM