case example; POLAROID; 2000. I remember discusing poaroid with other lawyers. it was crashing. low low low multi year lows. it wasnt clear at the time (i know this soudns crazy) that digital cameras would fully suppplant polaroid. people still took polaroids.
i remember lawyers smart dudes saying, there will lawyas be a polaroid, theyve been around forever, peopel will need them for investigation booking photos porn whatever.
we read the docs. polaroid had all kindf of neat new tehcnologies coming in the pike i cannot remmebr what. they read news. the stock price was so low!!! i t kep going down. friend bought in at i think 2 or 3. i was too chicken.
and we watch e dit sink and go bankrupt. we really didnt think the company coudl dispaear. i didnt.
in retrospect of course, difgital cameras “had” to rise, but at the time, digital cameras were kind of expensive and truly sucked, the resoution was so low. the market sure knew that digital cameras were gonna win out int he ned though,e evn though some smart dudes didn’t. it’s easy to look back and think you woulda known, but beleive me, you wouldn’t.
it wasnt clear at the time. nothing is ever clear at the time and thats why youc annot get the answers from homework, because it’s all fuzzy. i think marketwatch ran a series of article on polaroid at the time, and in some money magazine advice columns i specifcally remember columnists reseraching and touting polaroid as a no-brainer long term buy, nifty fifty stock from the 60’s, tried and true, great management, posied for the future whetehr its instant or digitial, idiots idiots idiots greta balance sheet, patents in the pipeline BS BS BS BS BS!!!! they know nothing! their reserach, your research is meaningless in front of the insatiable all knowing markeplace god. PEON! you who think you know something, who think youa re smart?! will ultimately be humbled before the market…
i wish id cut outt hat dumb article touintg polaroid as a great investment from money magazine. it would be good to tape to my checkbook. experts know nothing; you know nothing; the market theoretically knows everything by having digested everything.
but even the market is subject to what is called ‘noise”, meaning, that even thought he given market price is the theoretically correct price based on the billions of micros decisions made by individuals to buya nd sell all over the world, the price only approximates the true price because of “noise i’ in the amrkeplace, so that the price oscillates around what it truly should be.
id ont know i f i truly beleive any of this, i tend to beleive the marketplace is not efficient, but instead, compeltely insane, but due to professional indoctrination and media saturation i cannothelp but beleive at some level that the marketplace is kind of efficinet in processing info.
i stand by the proposition that effieinct market theory would sya that doing your homework means nothing. if a mutual fund manager paid a milion bucks a year cannot figure out how to beta the market what makes you think joe blwo reading a document (which the market has alreayd extensively pored over) would have any particular advnatage or woudl be able to spot a value that the market hasnt already spotted, fretted over and revalued through pricing.
unless youare clear on something. fi you somehow knew about the ascendancy of the digital camersas ya could amade a mint shorting polaroid on the other side of my friend. even then ya mighta been wrong. maybe polaroid coulda led the market…
but doent count on eevr knowing something like that.
i mean, who int he heck would be even able to say what the “homework” is; listening to a conference call fileld with spin and b.s.? reading headlines written by clueless journalists? reading fraduulent balance sheets or even fi they’re not fraduulent, listed with yesterdays news? because they earned money last year dont mean they’re going to earn money this year. just becaus ehtey ahve neat projects in developemnt doesnt mean anythings coming to fruition. if you knew the answers were in he homework maybe it would make sense. the hwole point is that the information wouldnt mean any more to you than it would to the market and if there were any advantage (read, profit) to be extracted by knwoing something, the market woulda alreayd figured it out.
but im pretty dang sure gold will hit 2k in the next 10 years.
that 2k may not buy ya much however….i was top 15% at top 20 law school
bototm of the class for typing.
top 15% didnt pay off though, i neve rmademucmoney coulda been at the bototm of the class wouldnt have made nay difference …
one of the htings you learna t law school and the bar exam and i think this can be confirmed by any lawyer is that the idea isnt to neatly or even grammatically put down ideas but to spew as many arguments as you can forwar and you get credit for thowing as much crapa s you can against the wall so liek on law school tests, often the peopel with higher grades though not always were those who elected to type siicne you could type more crap down than the writers though not always some of the writers obviously are very smart fast and organized but all things bein g equal the typist is going to be able to splay out more issue sna daddress htem and generally get more crap ont he apper than the writer so iw ould say that the ability to flow, to let as many conceivable ideas, issues, arguments and law bits out as quicklya spossible on the paper is a predictor of law sschoola dn alter bar success but will lilkely have little to no effect on your future career success and certialy zero predictive value on your ability to make money investing although it is indicative of a certia mental facility. proofreading on theother hand does come in handy as a lawyer but i dont get paid to proofread these posts….. no points for grammar.
in any event yeah, i emant it as a joke, as if having the 2nd highest grad eins ecurities regulation ina fancy alw school qualifies one for naything other than beng a lowly docuemt slave at a law firm drafting horrifically meaningless documents, but just to maybe semi-credentialize my maybe dumb comment. it was apthetic. i accep that. it wasmeant in a semi-self-mocking way, although, deep down, im kinda proud but still angry that i didnt get the hihgets grad.e i know who got that highest grade. there’s no way i coudla done better than him anyway.
2008 i came out ahead short the market and cash. i was short in 2007 while it was going up though, too, so it’s not like i really know anything really; i felt a crash was coming, just a guess based on my myopically performed “homework” but iw as way early in terms of time. right answer, wrong timing, you can lose a lot of money…
came out a few percent ahead because of gold, prudentbear, cash . most years i was just all cash, even int he 401 k, just cash, some bonds.
never ever ever think you’re smarter than the market. i myself didn’t take the advice, since i was shorting, but still, it’s dumb. whener you think something must happen it doesnt happen. then it happens after you thought it would happen; others have said this different ways but i thinkt he bottom line is, everyone may know the ultimate destination but has no real idea how or when we get there…. hey i wrote this whole post in 60 seconds pretty good!
amjurs the ward ya get for highest grad eina law ascool class. 2nd highest grade gets …..nothing. that why someone saying 2nd highest grade i sort of pathetic….although higest gradeis kinda pathetic too…cannot rememebr how id id in 4th grade grammar though, i think i generally won the Best Student of the Year Awards for each grade school class (still on display at my mother’s house) which was only predictive of a highly rebellious adolescence rather than any sort of acadmeic success… 2nd highets conjures up this bad taste in my mouth, amn i wanted to amjur that bastard. only amjured one class. i ahve thelittle piece of paper framed right across from me. if only i had that seond amjur boy, that would be something. then i could say i won the american jurisprudence award in securities regulation. but instead, im justa nother lsoer in the pack. dangit.
maybe im dating myself though maybe everyone types now with laptops and such maybe theres no typist advantage i dont knwo this was way back int he early 90s heck maybe the next thing will be some sort of psycho nano technologyw here you have to thinka s many issues as possible and the law grader registers your mental pulsation.
dont invets in psychonanotechnology if someone asks you to though…
