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CharlieMunger | 4 years ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/brkb/comments/l9hpo5/buffett_explai...
I blame the education system. Basic investing theory should be taught in high school.
We have to think of a share price as a number that is a sum of all future earnings, divided by powers of an interest rate according to how far in the future those earnings will be produced. That allows us to evaluate whether a share price is reasonable or unreasonable.
This concept is complex and most people can't understand it without formal education.
That education doesn't occur, so we have a huge mass of investors who have no idea what share prices mean. How can they possibly make good decisions?
tofukid|4 years ago
onlyrealcuzzo|4 years ago
It's hard to predict future revenues of a startup.
But it's not that difficult to get pretty close - looking a few years into the future - for big, established companies like Coke and Pepsi and GM.
The Fed gives investors a 2 year outlook on interest rates. In the last 20 years, they have only ever lowered rates by surprise - and that pushes share prices up. You're highly unlikely to lose a lot of money getting surprised by interest rate moves.
Sure - anything can happen, but historically, over a 3-5 year period, Coke's revenue and profit hasn't been very volatile.
But the share price IS much more volatile. This is what you arbitrage on. The people who are investing in the moment, when you're investing for a longer horizon.
Basically, this strategy is that the short term is much harder to predict than the medium term. I think everyone is in agreement that the very long term (for stocks) is pretty hard to predict.
jayd16|4 years ago
Use a statistical approach to analyzing the likelihood of outcomes against the costs.