Промышленный лизинг Промышленный лизинг  Методички 

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Being persistently all in financially has costs beyond just missing buying opportunities. In fact, it increases the likelihood that the lizard brain will activate precisely at the wrong time. This tends to lead to emotional puke outs where investors sell during buying opportunities.

This suggests that investors should maintain a financial reserve, and should only rarely and temporarily be all in. Such an investing philosophy allows one to have the ability to buy or sell at any given time depending on the conditions.

There are some similar lessons to be drawn from competitive poker. The World Series of Poker has no-limit rules allowing players to go all in at any time. My observation is that there is a systematic difference between great players and good players related precisely to the decision of when to be fully committed. The great players tend to go all in with hands where they have a good chance to win. Other players seem to more often get trapped into going all in with worse chances to win.

A key to winning at poker is to know when to lay down a hand. That is to quit playing, even with a good hand rather than bet more money. The great players will sometimes lay down even solid hands. Better to lose a few dollars and stay in the game. Bad poker players get trapped going all in when they shouldnt.

Conclusion: Keep your investment position conservative enough so that you preserve both options of increased risk or decreased risk should others panic and present you with an opportunity. Choose the time to go all in carefully and scale down quickly.

Lesson #8: Do Not Get the Key to the Mini Bar

When I check into a hotel, I never get the key to the mini bar. Without the key, I dont need willpower to avoid any late-night temptation to devour



junk food. I have found that most temptations are better avoided than resisted.

Ive noticed that some hotels no longer have mini bars, but instead they lay the food out on top of a table. Thus, the dont get the key defense doesnt work. In such cases, I call down to the front desk and have them remove the food.

I once arrived at one such devious hotel so late at night that I wanted to go to sleep immediately and not wait for someone to remove the food. As a partial preventative measure, I put a towel over the chocolate bars and other treats. While I still knew the junk food was in my room, at least I couldnt see it.

As we have seen, our investing instincts are out of sync with market opportunity. The investments that feel good are precisely those that are most likely to cost us money, and vice versa. This leads to the paradoxical situation that we sometimes gain by having fewer options. Usually, having more options is better, but when our instincts lead us to bad choices- as with junk food in the mini bar or with emotional investing decisions-we can make ourselves better off precisely by limiting our alternatives.

This less or more insight into self-control has become closely associated with the story of Odysseus and the Sirens. On his way home from the Trojan War, Odysseus had to sail past the Island of Sirens. These maidens song was so beautiful that sailors approached them and were killed as their ships crashed on the rocks surrounding the island.

The goddess Circe warns Odysseus of the danger and provides him with a solution in this passage of The Odyssey:

If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song...but if you like you can listen yourself, for you may get the men to bind you as you stand upright on a cross-piece half way up the mast, and they must lash the ropes ends to the mast



itself, that you may have the pleasure of listening. If you beg and pray the men to unloose you, then they must bind you faster.18

By following Circes advice, Odysseus survives the Sirens. He has himself strapped to the mast, and he commands everyone else on the ship to put wax in their ears so that they cannot be tempted by the Sirens. Because Odysseus is unable to control his ship or his men, he hears the Sirens, but is unable to approach their deadly shore. He achieves his goal precisely because he has limited his options. By tying his hands, Odysseus gets what he wants.

Inspired by this story, mast-strapping is used in the scientific literature on self-control to explain how having fewer options can sometimes lead to a better outcome. If we didnt have self-control problems, then more options would always be better.

For many people, financial mast-strapping can be a valuable tool. One of the primary problems in investing is our own desire to trade too much. Almost everyone seems to suffer from this problem, and so do I. Even with all of my knowledge that trading on impulse is bad, I still feel the tug every time I watch a market.

Because I like to trade too much, I have done some mast-strapping to constrain my trading. The first thing I did was lock up the bulk of my familys financial assets in a full-service brokerage account that charges $100 a trade. Why pay $100 for something that can be bought for far less? For me, the answer is that $100 works to reduce my costly trading.

Originally, I also kept a small amount in a discount firms account that charges $5 a trade. When the urge to trade struck me, I would indulge it, but only in this small account with the low commissions. This setup prevented me from overtrading most of our money. It was not, however, a perfect solution.

The Waco Kid (played by Gene Wilder) in Blazing Saddles had a similar problem to mine. While playing chess with the Sheriff Bart of Rock Ridge (played by Cleavon Little), Wilder says, I used to be the Waco Kid. The sheriff asks, why used to be ? In response, Wilder holds out



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