The Intellectual Investor
It was 2006, my fifth year teaching a graduate investment class at the University of Colorado at Denver, and I had stopped preparing for lectures. One day I opened the syllabus and found discounted cash flow analysis on the menu. I started with: "Imagine you are a farmer about to buy a cow. How much would you pay for that cow?" A few days later, on a Saturday morning, I was sitting in my basement working on the valuation chapter of my first book, Active Value Investing. I was stuck. Valuation can be a very dry and boring topic. After staring at a blank screen for hours, I started listening to...
info_outlineThe Intellectual Investor
A client emails me: stock XYZ has declined 25%, is the thesis broken? It's a fair question, and the honest answer is one I want to walk through carefully, because the same client letter brought a second question wearing different clothes: how do you tell the difference between patience and stubbornness when a position isn't working? Both questions get at something I think about constantly: how to hold a position through doubt without either flinching at noise or hardening into ego. Daily liquidity in the stock market is both a feature and a bug, and most of the job of being a long-term...
info_outlineThe Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: Adam Anderson's interview - AI-generated summary: The Intellectual Investor Breakfast 2027 signup form: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
info_outlineThe Intellectual Investor
The US dollar accounts for 58% of foreign currency reserves today, down from 70% two decades ago. The US government's freezing of roughly $300 billion of Russian central bank reserves turned the dollar into a political weapon and undermined the comfort countries (even adversaries) had in it. Central banks are now accumulating gold as if preparing for an Indian wedding. The Iran war, an unraveling of post-WWII alliances, and a US borrowing 6% more than it earns are all reacting to the same underlying shift: the assumptions behind US exceptionalism are quietly being rewritten. I walk through...
info_outlineThe Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
info_outlineThe Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
info_outlineThe Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
info_outlineThe Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
info_outlineThe Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: Register for Sunday Breakfast: Check out my Omaha weekend guide: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
info_outlineThe Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
info_outlineA client emails me: stock XYZ has declined 25%, is the thesis broken? It's a fair question, and the honest answer is one I want to walk through carefully, because the same client letter brought a second question wearing different clothes: how do you tell the difference between patience and stubbornness when a position isn't working?
Both questions get at something I think about constantly: how to hold a position through doubt without either flinching at noise or hardening into ego. Daily liquidity in the stock market is both a feature and a bug, and most of the job of being a long-term investor is learning to take the feature without getting hurt by the bug.
I work through why I don't try to interpret daily price movements anymore, and why trying to make sense of them is like looking for deep meaning in the poetry of inmates of an insane asylum. I talk about reading the press release and listening to the earnings call before I look at the stock price, so "the market" (a computer, a day trader in his mom's basement, or a fund manager with braces to pay for) doesn't tell me what to think about a company's performance.
Then I take on the harder question. I lay out what separates patience from stubbornness, why one investor is in scientist mode and the other is engulfed by ego, and why the line between hero and anti-hero is thinner than most of us want to admit. I borrow from Soul in the Game along the way.
The full piece is at investor.fm.
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WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates (IMA) and an award-winning writer. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." His work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Fortune, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy. He is the author of three books, including Soul in the Game: The Art of a Meaningful Life. _________________________________________________________
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