"Good enough" investing

Second, I am a proponent of “good enough” investing.  What I am saying here is that it is very difficult to achieve optimal results, and that if you try too hard to achieve optimal results, it is likely that you will do worse than good enough results.  The demands of perfection kill.  Size your goals to what is humanly possible.  My methods allow me to sleep at night.  My methods allow me to step away from my computer, and spend time analyzing what really might matter.  I can go visit clients and not worry that something is going to blow up on me.

David Merkel, The Aleph Blog

Древняя китайская пословица

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Pro sovka

"When in 1989 a group of sociologists led by Yuri Levada, began to study what they called Soviet Man, an artificial construct of doublethink, paternalism, suspicion and isolationism, they thought he was vanishing. Over the next 20 years they realised that Homo soveticus mutated and reproduced, acquiring along the way, new characteristics as cynicism and aggression."
The Economist, December 10 issue

why putin returns

Yeltsin, too, might have prolonged his presidency had it not been for his ill-health, but he was lucky enough to have Putin in place, not to bury the Yeltsin system, but to save it. Dmitry Medvedev, the cardboard dauphin, obviously couldn’t do for Putin what Putin did for Yeltsin. Putin’s decision to return to the Kremlin reveals not the strength but the weakness of the system he has built.

вот тебе и outside view

reading Kahneman

Про общее и частное: 

Subjects’ unwillingness to deduce the particular from the general was matched only by their willingness to infer the general from the particular.

Про меньше - больше:

“They constructed a very complicated scenario and insisted on calling it highly probable. It is not—it is only a plausible story.” 

“They added a cheap gift to the expensive product, and made the whole deal less attractive. Less is more in this case.”

Про то, как не бывает "маленьких рисков":

A basic limitation in the ability of our mind to deal with small risks: we either ignore them altogether or give them far too much weight—nothing in between.

Про планы:

Plans are best-case scenarios. Let’s avoid anchoring on plans when we forecast actual outcomes. Thinking about ways the plan could go wrong is one way to do it.

Краткое определение эвристики:

The technical definition of heuristic is a simple procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions. The word comes from the same root as eureka.

Про повторение:

Very little repetition is needed for a new experience to feel normal!

И главное - про связность! (жирный шрифт - мой)

The participants were fully aware of the setup, and those who heard only one side could easily have generated the argument for the other side. Nevertheless, the presentation of one-sided evidence had a very pronounced effect on judgments. Furthermore, participants who saw one-sided evidence were more confident of their judgments than those who saw both sides. This is just what you would expect if the confidence that people experience is determined by the coherence of the story they manage to construct from available information. It is the consistency of the information that matters for a good story, not its completeness. Indeed, you will often find that knowing little makes it easier to fit everything you know into a coherent pattern.

навальный, кто ж ещё?..

В России воруют не так уж и много. На один сп****нный рубль приходится пять прое***ных. 

Today's BBG quote of the day

Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.

Xenophon