The Tao Can Help You When Contemplating The Dow

1/ I’ve often said that reading broadly outside of finance can be useful in understanding and crafting better investment processes. For the next few weeks,
2/ I’m going to illustrate how some of the verses from one of my favorite books, “The Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu can help us become better investors.

Verse Three
In the third verse of the book, Lao Tzu looks at how attachment and beliefs can cause frustration and bitterness
3/in our lives. By clinging to a treasured belief or thing, we close our minds to other ideas and to the very notion that we might in fact be wrong.

Lao Tzu says:
4/ “If the sage refuses to be proud then people won’t compete for his attention. Not to value treasures that are hard to come by keeps people from wanting to steal them…You see, if there is nothing to fight for then there is nothing that can break the flow.”
5/ I liken this to having a beginner’s mind.

If we attach huge value to an opinion or to a material procession, we will naturally fight to protect it. Your ego becomes activated, and you will become very protective of that treasured thing, true or not.
6/ What if something you believe is wrong or something you bought a fake? You will expend a huge amount of psychic and emotional energy defending a lie. That will weaken your will and tire your mind.
7/ By embracing Lao Tzu’s advice, we rid ourselves of beliefs that could be wrong and free ourselves from identifying our egos with it. Don’t embrace the cliché “it’s my way or the highway.” As you study, seek out things that may be helpful to your process,
8/ but don’t wed yourself to them no matter what.

Look at all the unresolved arguments on this platform. Are people’s minds changed? Does all the fighting and verbal combat leave anyone better off? I think not. I think it leaves them embittered, angry and exhausted.
9/ In crafting your investment process, remember that “all models are flawed, but some are useful.” As Wittgenstein said, “Don’t look for the meaning: Look for the use!” Because something is useful does not make it a holy truth. It simply makes it useful.
10/ Remember, the more you attach yourself to a thing or a belief, the harder it is to shed it and move on to a better understanding. Always question and keep an open mind to new information. It’s the very opposite of a dogmatic, closed approach to life.
11/ By adopting a flexibility that allows for "strong ideas, loosely held" you will remain an open learner, and that, in my opinion, is one of the keys to developing a successful process for investing.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Jim OShaughnessy

Jim OShaughnessy Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @jposhaughnessy

Feb 17
1/ I'm recording an @InfiniteL88ps chat with @krishnanrohit today and going through his work is like catnip for me--I've been thinking about things that he opines on with a vastly better take than my early dreams on such as virtual reality.
2/ But what I think is cool is that we've been thinking about these things for a LONG time, exhibit A👇🏻(1988)

3/ It seems ideas take longer to become realities than many (very much including me) think they will, exhibit B 👇🏻
Read 11 tweets
Feb 12
Douglas Adams 🗣️

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
“Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”

“I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”
Read 4 tweets
Jan 17
1/ Our team at @InfiniteL88ps wanted to experiment with the NFT marketplace in order to get a better understanding of how it worked and see if the online auction pace was similar to what we see offline.

We commissioned the artist @cernicageanina to produce the artwork 👇🏻
2/ Our hypothesis was that an NFT that "unlocked" a benefit would be more highly valued than one that didn't, so we included the opportunity to either co-host an @InfiniteL88ps with me or choose a guest.

As far as the behaviour of the auction, we found it *did* mimic that of
3/ auctions conducted IRL. The price stayed pretty stable until the last half hour, when @vtslkshk watched as the price screamed higher, with the winning bidder @dineshraju paying WETH 9.0 or approximately $36,543.78 $USD at the time of the sale.
Read 25 tweets
Jan 15
1/ “A good magic trick forces the spectator to tell a story that arrives at an impossible conclusion, and the clearer the story is, the better.”
~@DerrenBrown
The first job I ever got paid to do was that of a professional magician. I’d loved magic since my early childhood
2/ and badgered my mother to take me to the Eagle Magic Store in Minneapolis almost every Saturday, where I would linger for hours and bug adult magicians to teach me some of the tricks of the trade. Unlike many of my friends who had posters of their favorite bands or
3/ Farrah Fawcett on their walls, I had Harry Houdini. I was fascinated with the ability to create illusions that made people gasp in delight. I started using two books that my dad had given me (which I think my grandfather gave to *him*) and learned as many effects with cards
Read 19 tweets
Jan 14
1/ Recorded a great conversation with @RickDoblin, the Founder and Executive Director of @MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. We were joined by Amy Emerson, the CEO of the MAPS Public Benefit Corporation (MAPS PBC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of @MAPS
2/ We had a broad ranging discussion about the potential benefits of psychedelics in treating PTSD; depression; alcoholism and many other conditions that have challenged doctors and have been notoriously difficult for therapists to help patients find lasting recoveries.
3/ We also discussed the history of why governments and other authorities vilified psychedelics through a sustained propaganda effort that still has effects on people's attitudes to this very day. There are major breakthroughs occurring regularly in research trials conducted
Read 5 tweets
Jan 1
“The ordinary man places his life's happiness in things external to him, in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and the like, so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer
In his book "Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine," @DerrenBrown writes "The vital changes to our happiness do not come from outside circumstances, however appealing they might seem." and our failure to understand this leads many to mount the hedonic treadmill.
He illustrates how many of our desires--things we think will make us happy--are actually chased in order to impress other people, thinking that the approval of these 'other people,' many of whom we don't even know, will lead to happiness for ourselves.
Read 24 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(