David Merkel's 'When I Was Young'

David Merkel has a post up this week that is absolute gold.  He briefly recounts a few episodes – from childhood through the present – that gave him the foundation of his market intuition and stockpicking wisdom.  If you read very few blog posts this week, make this one of them…

From the Aleph Blog:

The paper portfolio that I created in August of 1982 proved to be fun for my students when I was a TA at UC-Davis in Corporate Financial Management.  I mentioned the portfolio in class, and a subset of students asked to see it.  By the time the class ended, the market was up 20%, but the portfolio was up 40%.  By this time the professor had heard about it, and he said, “Oh, you have a portfolio with a beta of two.”  I tried to explain to him that the beta estimates of the portfolio were much lower than that, and that I had “bought” the names cheaply.  but to no avail… once the religion of efficient markets takes hold, no amount of  facts will prevail.

Head over for the rest of these anecdotes, you will love.

Source:

When I Was Young (Aleph Blog)