Introduction:

"every night before you go to bed, you are a little smarter than in the morning," Munger said.

Everyone can be seen as an asset, and the value of this asset is the sum of all the values it can create in the future. People are actually Bayesian animals, a good direction of self-improvement is to cultivate their own more and more perfect Bayesian network.

Therefore, we are the best investment targets for ourselves.

Investment, in the final analysis, is the ability to understand the world and the projection of the overall wisdom of decision-makers in the field of investment. The world and the wisdom of understanding the world are always complex and constantly changing, so there is no deterministic application to follow.

In fact, just like our daily tweets, none of them must be absolute truth, and the significance of inspiration is often greater than that of specific knowledge. Different people have different Bayesian networks, so the cognition gained from the article is also different.

Following, I wish you success in opening the book:

As investors, have you ever had such an experience?

I hear you are an investor. Why don't you tell us how to invest correctly?

Uh, well, how do you say this thing?

The scene was awkward for a time.

In fact, it is not that the person being questioned does not want to talk about it, but it is really not clear in a few words about investment. if this is the case, this method would have been invalid a long time ago, because the efficient market theory is so easy for everyone to do it. Bad street theory, everyone can lie down to earn a lot of money, do you think there is such a good thing?

There is a threshold for investment.

I firmly believe that behind every thing with low threshold and high return, there must be complicated operating logic, and it takes hard practice to get a glimpse of it or two. High threshold and high return may not be very complicated, as long as the early efforts reach the threshold, competitors with less natural dividends are all yours.

The title of "investor" is not very classy. You have some money in your hand and spend three or four thousand yuan to ask people to do the whole process of registering a company. Even accounting can give you a round package, and then print a CEO business card. It still looks the same.

But face is saved. What about Li Zi?

Will you bring your own money into the project because of your shiny title? Of course not, whether to make money or to make money, damn it or die.

Therefore, in this era of "packaging" is readily available, I hope everyone can focus on practicing their own internal skills. It doesn't matter who you are, but what you can do.

Investment and speculation are two ways.

Investment and speculation, the former looks high-end, the latter is easy to equate with gambling.

So what's the difference between them?

There's not much difference.

Some people distinguish it from the perspective of time, saying that the cycle of investment is longer and the cycle of speculation is shorter. How long is long and how short is short? Is there a clear dividing line between this so-called cycle? Does not exist.

Some people distinguish from the perspective of risk, saying that the risk of investment is smaller and the risk of speculation is greater. But if so, all angel investors should be called "angel speculators", because generally speaking, more than 80% of projects are zero.

Some people distinguish it from the point of view of purpose, saying that investment is for the purpose of obtaining profits generated by capital, and speculation is for the purpose of obtaining the increase in the value of capital. This seems legitimate and in line with our general understanding, but it is also wrong, because according to this distinction, investment growth companies are obviously dominated by speculative purposes, and Buffett should be called a master of speculation, not an investment master. and getting 30% annual interest from money into P2P should also be called investment behavior.

Others distinguish from the perspective of information, saying that investment has more comprehensive information, speculation is often irrational, and decisions are made by one-sided information. This is also not true, because in essence, we all rely on comprehensive and one-sided information to make any decisions. if we "think" that we are one-sided, how can we call it speculation? It's not even gambling. Only those whose mathematical expectations are equal to 0 are called gambling, those with negative mathematical expectations are called mental retarded games (such as lotteries), and those whose mathematical expectations are greater than 0, or those who think they are greater than 0, are in line with investment and speculation.

Therefore, investment and speculation are essentially the same thing, that is, under the premise that the mathematical expectation is greater than 0, it is a kind of behavior to obtain long-term benefits by giving up the use of current value as the cost.

No matter whether the long-term benefit comes from the time value of the capital itself or from the growth value of the capital, the goal is that the value at the time of exit is greater than that at the time of investment. No matter how good the subject matter is, it is bought in order to sell, and there is only one reason why it can be sold but not sold now. it is more cost-effective to subjectively judge that it will be sold in the future. as for how long it will be in the future, who knows?

Bernard Baruch said: "when I was young, people called me an speculator, then an investor, then a banker, and now I'm a philanthropist, but from beginning to end, I did the same thing. "

What is the best investment target?

From this point of view, each of us is born an investor. Why? Because we invest all the time, the most common subject matter is also the best subject matter, which is yourself.

Self-worth is enhanced by investing in learning, so everyone is born an investor, but the basic survival skills are unconscious necessary investments, while higher value enhancements are conscious targeted investments.

So why do I say this subject matter is the best?

Let's think about it again, will money make money on its own? No matter who you give the money to, will one change into two? Of course not, your income is due to the fact that the other person takes your money and produces a bigger profit, and then gives you a small piece of it, and its core is still the income from the product, so no matter where you invest, the ultimate subject matter of your capital is the product, the company, and the project.

However, having said so much, will anyone consider themselves as a subject matter?

Money invests in the subject matter, making it more valuable so that it can be sold at a profit. this is the mode of thinking of ordinary people, probably because "people" are very difficult to sell, so many people do not consider them as the object of consideration. but in fact, "person" is the real subject matter. Because although the whole person can not be sold, but the person's unit time can be sold, ah, the person's value increases, the unit output will increase, and the valuation will also increase.

This is what I said, why we are the best investment subject matter, invest our resources in ourselves as much as possible, make ourselves better and have the ability to produce more value, which no one can take away. And when your subject matter is developing well and starting to have a polymerization effect, why not turn it into yourself?

Cumulative benefit

After we make self-investment and self-appreciation, we still need some other investment targets after all. As I have mentioned above, investment should have cumulative benefits, especially among multiple targets.

To put it simply, it is best to have a certain degree of bonus return between your investment targets, that is, 1% 1 > 2, or 1% 1% 1 > 3, which is very important and is the key point to distinguish the level of your investment layout.

Some people say, it is very simple, it is not to open up the upstream and downstream, I invest in a foreign trade company, and then invest in a foreign trade factory, the processing money in the middle does not have to be earned by others. This is not called investment layout. If you use go as an analogy, this is simply the "eldest son", who only breathes out the last one. In my opinion, no matter how many upstream and downstream you get through, it is only 1-1-1. It's just one of the ones.

I have elaborated on the importance of the pattern. At each level, we will see a much better world, and the investment layout competes with the pattern.

Pattern is the cognitive level, it is such a thing, the best solution of the lower level may be the worst from the upper level; those at the lower level cannot see the upper level; almost everyone in each layer will think of themselves as the highest level.

You can see why everyone thinks they will invest and have the ability to make money from it.

Investment needs to be considered microscopically.

After choosing the investment subject matter macroscopically, it is time for microcosmic consideration. What factors should we pay most attention to when we invest?

Founder, founder! Say the important thing three times.

Some people say, money, technology and teams are not important enough?

Important, but the team is a derivative of the founder, will a founder with a big pattern go to the ground to pull the team? So this is put on the consideration of the overall quality of the founder. As for capital and technology, as long as excellent talents are in place, these are not a problem at all.

In my opinion, a good founder should have at least the following qualities:

1. General pattern. The founder's vision and pattern must be large, the cognitive level must be high, and you can grasp the core of things at once, so that you can know what you are doing.

2. Attraction. The founder is generally the spiritual leader of the company, he may not need eloquence, but must be the company's Poseidon needle, with its own temperament to attract talent.

3. Execution. Excellent founders and founding teams have strong execution, often as soon as there is a new idea, can immediately produce a sample, expected to be 5 days, usually 3 days to complete, to do the work to kill.

4. Willing to study. The world is changing faster and faster, and it will only be faster in the future. those who do not learn, those who learn slowly, and those who learn slowly are left behind. only entrepreneurs who keep learning fast all their lives will have a higher margin of safety.

If you want to invest in a macro field, it is basically more reliable to find such an entrepreneur, and the consideration of the specific projects he is working on should always come after the quality of the founder.

Investment is a comprehensive cognitive game.

We tend to think that investment is a money game, but it is not. Investment is a comprehensive cognitive game that tests whether you can see through the nature of things at a glance.

Many people have money in their hands. Which project should they invest in? If all you have left is money, it's more appropriate to buy professional financial services honestly, even if it shrinks slightly, at least it's better than throwing it away.

The logic is simple: if the other party's project is good enough, there will be no shortage of people who will give money at all, why do you want your money? Every good investor has his own unique resources, entrepreneurs want these resources to help the company grow in exchange for equity, and the money is simply used to complete the deal, that's all.

So many people think that the core of investment is money, which has gone off track, so that something like "investment psychology" has emerged outside the track.

In fact, there is no psychology in investment, that is, to see if there is a clear understanding of things. For example, the patience of investment, how long is patience? It all depends on your judgment on the future value of the investment target; or, for example, the emotional control of investors, which is the after-effect of blind bets without seeing clearly, ah, you should find a way to avoid it. Isn't it important to control your emotions? For example, if investors are overconfident due to successive victories, the root of the error is not psychological at all, but probability and logic should be restudied, isn't it?

After making trouble for a long time, who can sum up a really useful iron law of investment?

Throughout the article, I didn't sum up the "10 iron rules that the right investment should follow," right, because that thing doesn't exist, even the seemingly correct "most people always lose money". It will also fail because of the popularity of the "iron law".

Investment, in the final analysis, is the ability to understand the world and the projection of the overall wisdom of decision-makers in the field of investment, while the wisdom of the world and understanding the world is always complex and constantly changing, so it has no deterministic application to follow.