Investing as Life's Work

Preserving the Love of Value Investing for Young Investors

Inspired by the great post of Paul Graham, I started thinking about how young value investors can pursue investing uniquely as one’s life’s work.

In any field, it is natural that one may start with learning about the past and current greats of the field. Building on the great work of others is often a good starting approach. The next step is however, where the key differentiation lies- 

One can fall into the trap of become totally enamored by past great achievers, their way and principles that one takes them religiously to heart as unchallenged principles in their field of work. Human mindset will always try to look for a cult figure to blindly emulate for life. The school age habits of defining the work in some category (labels) will ask us to learn discipline to execute the principles of the field rather than re-define the field itself.

One’s life work can merely turn to become a great executor of someone else’ ideas rather than finding one’s own, from where long-term contentment and greatness comes from. 

The other approach is to consciously dig deeper to the essence of core scientific principles and then let them provide overarching freedom to explore uncommon or seemingly novel approaches.

I have also found the similar issue in the field of value investing wherein the risks lie that keeping oneself in one group will hinder ability to expand his horizon and learn other approaches. A lot of experienced value investors have acknowledged falling into this trap in their lives while the explorers were ridiculed. For example, Bill Miller, a legendary value investor, was ridiculed for his unique non-contemporary approach of buying a non-cash generating business like Amazon in the value investing community. 

A young investor interested in doing great work must be relentless in the pursuit of expansion and exploration. Whenever he feels like settling in some circle, he must force himself to look for new fields and challenge his long held beliefs about investing . As the late Charlie Munger always preached - ‘it is a wasted year if one doesn't kill his long-held belief’.

A young investor has the luxury of time in his favor to come to his truth or way of investing in the long-run and not narrow himself down quickly. It is perfectly okay and perhaps beneficial to not have a clearly defined strategy or approach in place as he is flexible to look for opportunities wherever his natural curiosity takes him to. He may ultimately end up with one approach (like a lot of value investing greats) but at least it will be in line with his personality and not a forcing function. 

This natural curiosity and freedom of exploration will only make this journey worthwhile and exciting in the long-run to be called one’s own work.

Akhil D.