I ordinarily think of the world as messy, but it is unusual when the world validates my opinions.? Civil war in Libya?? Whouda thunk it?
But that is why prior preparation is valuable.? Not that I have a anti-mess portfolio trading as an ETF.? That’s not the way I think.? Besides, it is very difficult to come up with negative plays of any significant size.? And that is the nature of the world.? With global trade so large, we are one big happy world.? Wars anywhere tend to produce losses, and even if you own energy equities in size as I do, the losses are still significant.
This is yet another reason why I argue that it is important to invest with a provision for adverse deviation.You can’t tell what the global situation will kick up.? So adjust your portfolios for flexibility, recognizing significant constraints, like energy and agriculture.
If Libya were a portfolio…
blog post by a fan of Alephblog
http://mahalanobis.twoday.net/stories/14661441/
“But that is why prior preparation is valuable. ”
Very wide, undefined swath of interpretation on that one. Would be a fun exercise to list WS’ “prior preparation(s)” over, say last decade… see what that was all about. GS’ sump dump legal mumbo jumbo arrangement w/AIG, wouldn’t that qualify?
“Besides, it is very difficult to come up with negative plays of any significant size. And that is the nature of the world.”
Clarification: that’s the nature of ill conceived human initiative w/subsequent manifested affects in the world. As I look at creation, the world… as designed, works perfectly well.
Perfectly… every single time.
“This is yet another reason why I argue that it is important to invest with a provision for adverse deviation.”
Good advice. I go for investment in intelligence, and acknowledgment of integrity/honesty in increasingly fewer nooks & crannies where I can find it.
The money stuff always follows that.
The trick is having clear enough eye to identify such events, as traditional means no longer provide reliable metrics.
My observation is that way too many people just don’t understand what currency really is. They only *think* they do.