Frank Perdue took Perdue Farms, a small local company his father started, and grew it into a multi-billion-dollar business.
Mitzi Perdue tells this amazing story about her late husband:
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1) Frank had a tremendous head for figures. He treated numbers the way a doctor would treat an MRI: numbers enabled him to see and understand what was going on deep inside the business, plus numbers were a very quick way of detecting if something was going wrong.
2) I need to share something that happened when Frank was 85, maybe half a year before his passing. We were visiting Massachusetts General Hospital to assess how he was handling the Parkinson’s disease that was soon to take him.
3)The session began with the doctor showing us some disheartening images taken earlier that day, disheartening because they revealed the extent that Frank’s brain had been impacted by Parkinson’s. Frank accepted the dismal information stoically.
4) Then came the part we were there for, tracking how much impairment the Parkinson’s had actually caused. The first question the doctor asked Frank was to count backwards from 100 by sevens.
5) Frank did that as fluently as I would have if I were counting forward by twos. No hesitation. And remember, this was a seriously ill person who was only months away from going to his reward.
6) The next questions were harder, such as listening to a string of numbers and then being asked not only to remember them, but also to repeat the same string backwards. I was expecting to follow along doing the problems in my head myself. The trouble was it was too difficult.
7) Frank went on for about 20 rounds after I had to drop out. I was stunned. My jaw was gaping. I couldn’t believe anybody could do what I was witnessing Frank do.
8) At the end of the test, I took the doctor aside, out of Frank’s hearing and told him, “Doctor, you’ve been testing the wrong person. I must be the one who’s ill because I dropped out after the first few rounds.”
9) The doctor answered that my stopping early was what he’d expect from anyone, and that Frank, in spite of being seriously impaired from the Parkinson’s, was performing at an Olympic level.
10) He said Frank’s performance was so astounding that he (the doctor) would have given five years of his life to see what Frank was like before he was impaired.
11) Which brings me to a quick side thought about Frank. He must have had a phenomenal IQ, but you’d never know it because he absolutely, totally never flaunted it. He would talk with everyone at his or her level.
12) He was also one of the more successful men in America, but again, you’d never know it from his house, his clothes, his possessions or any visible status symbol. He was also charitable on a phenomenal scale, but did everything he could to keep it secret.
13) I find it interesting that a man with so much to boast about never, ever boasted.
If you enjoyed this story you will love this book about him:
You don’t hear much about full-time private investors because publicity doesn’t benefit them. In fact, publicity hurts them. Full-time private investors like the fact that even family and friends don’t quite know what they do for a living.
They like the fact that they’ve built up an extensive knowledge level in a niche of the market where it doesn’t benefit them to arm-wave their successes.
Microcap investors are mainly retail investors. Some of the best microcap investors I know are small business owners. They understand the complexity, volatility, and nuances of running a small business. Microcap isn’t an institutional asset class, it’s an entrepreneurial one.
Most "financial professionals" think you're dumb for investing in these small companies, but that is only because they can only buy them after they go up 10x, are 70% institutional held, and have 10 analysts covering them.
The financial machine loves lemmings.
The haters will say microcaps are sleazy slimy uninvestable companies. Yes, plenty of those. But a lot less than VC. The nice thing is most file audited financials with the SEC, and if you know how to read financial statements you can cut out a lot of the risk.
I've always loved Druckenmiller because he says the complete opposite of what they teach you
"The few times that Soros has ever criticized me was when I was really right on a market and didn't maximize the opportunity."
Stanley Druckenmiller
"The first thing I heard when I got in the business was, 'Bulls make money, bears make money, and pigs get slaughtered.' I'm here to tell you I was a pig. And I strongly believe the only way to make long-term returns in our business that are superior is by being a pig."
"Earnings don't move the overall market; it's the Federal Reserve Board... focus on the central banks, and focus on the movement of liquidity... most people in the market are looking for earnings and conventional measures. It's liquidity that moves markets."
I learned investing by losing money, making it, losing money, making it. This is when you develop a set of experiences that are unique to you that define your investment strategy. Don’t be afraid to learn investing by investing.
Concentrating on just a few stocks/businesses early in your investment journey is a great way to learn investing because the outcomes are extreme. You learn what you don't know quickly. You feel the intense greed of a win, and the anguish of a loss.
Of course few in “high finance academic circles” like admitting it because no one wants to promote recklessness but Charlie gets it.
“Extreme outcomes — good or bad — often educate best.”
We are all being chased by something. That thing is put there for a reason. You weren’t put on this Earth to be average. microcapclub.com/2019/10/what-i…