Link to: Year-End Odds and Ends and
Divesting When Discomfited [free registration may be required]
GMO's 4Q 2013 Letter includes Jeremy Grantham’s “Year-End Odds and Ends,” which includes a new series entitled “Investment Lessons Learned” as well as Ben Inker’s “Divesting When Discomfited.”
Grantham:
Investment Lessons Learned: Mistakes Made Over 47 Years
1) Inside advice, legal in those days, from friends in the company is a particularly dangerous basis for decisions; you know little how limited their knowledge really is and you are overexposed to sustained enthusiasm.
2) Always diversify, particularly for your pension fund.
3) Fraud, near-fraud, or colossal incompetence can always strike.
4) Don’t buy stocks yourself if you’re an amateur: invest with a relatively rare expert or in a low-cost index.
5) Investing when young will start your brain turning on things financial.
6) Painful errors teach you more than success does.
7) Luck helps and finally…
8) Have a convenient mother to be the fall guy.