October 12, 2009 TOTIS PORCIS - The Whole Hog (When odds in favour Being Greedy like a Pig) Contributor: Abhir Pandit |
[email protected] "It is not how likely an event is to happen that since their allocations could be done differently. Great matters, it is how much is made when it happens investors don't stop with finding mispriced securities; that should be the consideration. How frequently they also know how to take maximum advantage of the the profit is irrelevant, it is the magnitude of the opportunities given the respective risk/reward outcome that matters." situations. This mindset is in built in many successful investors and traders the following example show the Nassim Taleb - Fooled By Randomness point. While thinking about position sizing two very good examples of the same investor are known. In this week's article we try to address the difference between frequency and magnitude in investing and In 1963 after the Salad Oil scandal caused American importance of position sizing. Express stock to decline, Buffett allocated 25% of his assets at that time when he realized that the stock was Since investing is supposed to deal with future it is supremely mispriced. inherently a probabilistic exercise dealing with various possible scenarios and diverging views of the future. So In 1988-89 when Warren Buffett was purchasing Coca- thus we must try to increase the exposure to the being Cola shares he allocated 37% of his portfolio at that time right events and minimize exposure to the being wrong to Coca-Cola stock. events. It is now well documented and a well known phenomenon that humans suffer roughly twice as much Though these examples are of an extremely skilled from losses as they receive pleasure from comparable investor while considering the position sizing of an gains.