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You are not as smart as you think you are - Ep 295

Release Date: 07/10/2026

You are not as smart as you think you are - Ep 295

The Intellectual Investor

Lately, I've been getting this powerful feeling that everything I touch turns to gold. Every time I buy a stock, it goes up. Did I finally figure out the stock market game? Did I find a secret way to follow Will Rogers' advice: Buy stocks that go up, and if they don't go up, don't buy them? No. I didn't get much smarter. I was simply a willing participant in the latest cyclical bull market. A bull market makes you feel smarter than you are, the same way a bear market makes you feel dumber than you are. This piece is a small excerpt from my first book, Active Value Investing (2007), which I...

Guy and I - Ep 294

The Intellectual Investor

My dear friend Guy Spier did an almost hour-long interview with CNBC's Becky Quick. It is an interview I wish had never happened, or, if it did, for a different reason. Guy has been diagnosed with glioblastoma (GBM), one of the deadliest cancers. In January, Guy returned money to his investors, closed his fund, and wrote a must-read letter. I first heard of Guy at Charlie Munger's Daily Journal meeting, when a friend pointed to his silhouette and whispered his name with a deference that made me take note. Our friendship actually began a few years later in Trani, Italy, where my brother Alex...

This Is Your Captain Speaking - Buckle Up - Ep 293

The Intellectual Investor

I am on the flight from Denver to San Francisco with my twelve-year-old daughter when I write this letter to IMA clients about the craziness I am seeing in the markets. The turbulence on the flight gave me the pilot analogy. The rest came from what I see in valuations. This market is starting to feel incredibly bubbly, approaching circa 1999. The similarities are eerie. Intel and Corning, darlings of 1999, are at multidecade highs at nosebleed valuations. Walmart is trading at 50 times earnings again, the same multiple that produced no returns for shareholders from 1999 to 2014. And Nvidia,...

Fiddler on the Roof and Value Investing - Ep 292

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...

What to Do When a Stock Drops 25% - Ep 291

The 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...

Greg Abel Takes Over Berkshire Hathaway: My Thoughts After Omaha 2026 - Ep 290

The 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.

What the Iran War Reveals About the Dollar, Gold, and the End of US Exceptionalism - Ep 289

The 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...

Q&A Series: On Firing Clients, Sizing Positions, and Ignoring Book Value - Ep 288

The 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.

Q&A: The Antifragile Investor: Balancing Geopolitics, Identity, and the Cost of Growth - Episode 287

The Intellectual Investor

Uber and Self-Driving Cars: The Utilization Problem Nobody Talks About - Ep 286

The Intellectual Investor

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No. I didn't get much smarter. I was simply a willing participant in the latest cyclical bull market. A bull market makes you feel smarter than you are, the same way a bear market makes you feel dumber than you are.

This piece is a small excerpt from my first book, Active Value Investing (2007), which I later rewrote into The Little Book of Sideways Markets. I still stand by every word, but the older, more mature Vitaliy has some additional thoughts to share at the end.

I walk through why feeling smart makes you do the opposite of what you should be doing, and my favorite trick for reminding myself how dumb I am (it involves pulling out an old annual report on a stock I lost a boatload of money in). I discuss the four-letter word R-I-S-K, the "buy and forget to sell" investor a bull market quietly creates, and why every sell looks dumb in the moment. I talk about selling discipline, valuation targets, and why my objective is never to buy at the bottom or sell at the top.

In the additional thoughts, I get into the discomfort of making rational decisions against the grain of the tribe, and what evolutionary programming has to do with it.

The full piece is at investor.fm.

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The Little Book of Sideways Markets - https://amzn.to/3QWTlqZ
Active Value Investing - https://amzn.to/3u8zn3A

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Website - https://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. _________________________________________________________

Please read the following important disclosure: https://investor.fm/disclosure/

View IMA's regulatory filings — including ADV Part 2A & 2B, Form CRS, firm brochure, conflicts of interest disclosures, sample quarterly letters, and privacy policy — at imausa.com.

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