Đặc điểm của nhà Đầu tư Vĩ đại

Video này nằm trong một hội thảo tên "Principal Investment Conference" của trường Stanford Graduate School Of Business.
Người trình bày là Thomas Barrack, sáng lập, chủ tịch và CEO của Colony Capital nói về đặc điểm của một nhà đầu tư vĩ đại.

Video này dài 53 phút nên nếu bạn quan tâm, có thể download xem lại sau
Tips: dùng công cụ http://www.dlflv.com/ hay http://keepvid.com/
Youtube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnqoA-vAbRs



Riêng Slideshow mà ông này trình bày mình có ghi chú lại để bạn tiện theo dõi.

Characteristics of a Great Investor

Characteristics of a Big Wave Surfer
- Once you have graduated to big waves, everyone is great, conditional, experienced, talented, and capable
--> Consequently, to distinguish yourself from your peers you must add something: more preparation, harder work, more honed instincts, quicker risk evaluation, greater risk tolerance

- Terror can be your greatest enemy or your best ally
- Knows exactly where to exit before he enters
- Doesn't panic in a wipeout and doesn't flight the current
- It is about "taking risk" not "avoiding risk"
- Standing on the board is the easy part - being in the right position for the takeoff is everything
- Evaluatees by instinct: the current, the height of the swell, the wind, the tide, the temperature, the direction of the swell, the coral reef bottoms, the peak, the trough, the time between sets, the impact zone and the position and experience level of the other surfers in the water
--> Anticipation!!!
- Commitment: "lmua" - once the decision is made to paddle into the face of three story building, you go
--> commit - no hesitation, no slow down, no second guessing
- Humility trumps, arrogance
- Avoids crowded take-offs and amateurs
- Adaptability and Cultural 6th Sense
- Understands that his choice of waves not to ride is as important as his coice of waves to ride
- Is prepared for the worst circumstance in the worst condition
- Shows respect to all those around him
- Demands respect from all those around him
- Manages his "comfort zone" - extend too much you are dead: extend too little you are dead

Characteristics of a Great Investor

Opportumistic vs. Strategic

"The problem is that our ideas are sticky: once we produce a theory, we are not likely to change our minds - so those who delay developing their theories are better off... Two mechanisms are at play here:
the confirmation bias..and the belief in perseverance, the tendency not to reverse opinions you already have. Remember that we treat ideals like possessions, and it will be hard for us to part with them."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
"The Black Swan"

- Loyalty to ideas is a bad thing - you get stuck in your point of view
--> You formulate the idea in a test tube and then go out into the world to see f it exists
- An event which proves a theory inaccurate should be used as an opportunity, not a dilemma
- Extraordinary returns are minted in macro moments
- Ability to adapt and reverse your opinion in an instant is essential
- Thinking outside the box is not enough - you must live outside the box
--> Your instincts will be more honed by experiencing all the aspects of life that seem totally irrelevant to your prime business purpose - this will give you a unique texture to your box
- Preparation, preparation, preparation

- Good investors search for things they know but have the freedom of thought to be amused by what they don't know
- Lay long lines - breed contacts and relationships when you don't need them
- The Karma Bank works - just not necessarily at the moment you would like it
--> Character and integrity are a lifestyle, not attributes
- Totally and quickly accessible to all
- Reliance on too much education can reduce your risk tolerance, numb your nerve-endings, and commonize your entrepreneurial skills
- After a great education you need to retrain yourself togo to the edge

"DO IT NOW!"

The information you have is not the information you want
The information you want is not the information you need
The information you need is not the information you can get
The information you can get everyone already has

Observations

Tipping point

- Troubled securitizations are looking for the exit but it is unclear who the counterparties are, what the special servicer can do, and with whom one should restructure
--> You will need Google Earth to find a counterparty
- Many investment banks' securitization groups will disappear and become minimalized
- Writedowns will begin percolating up from:
--> Subprime mortgages to near-prime and prime mortgages, commercial real estate mortgages, auto loans, credit cards, corporate buyout loans, corporate bonds, and derivatives
- Rating agencies were coach and referee - Bond Insurers were the Scalpers - regulatory capital arbitrage between capital requirements of bond insurers and capital requirements of banks
- Bond insurer dilemma will cause an avalanche of downgrades
--> Buffet's offer would simply take the baby (muni bond portfolio) and leave the dirty bathwater (CDO portfolio)
- There will be a continued litany of horribles which will follow the meltdowns of rated securities, rating agencies, rating inaurera, and the banks providing liquidity facilities to them
- Private Equity which bought companies at a 20-30% premium anticipating EBITDA expansion, leveraged at 5x, and now experiencing 20% stock market evaporation will have some challenges in debt and equity
- Repricing crisis could be in the trillions, not billions - accountants and accounting rules will play a major part
--> We will soon find out if "Fair Value" accounting is fair
- Decoupling - It is a myth and the world will follow us into a slowdown and dog out including China and Japan
--> The world will be praying for "recoupling"

Conclusions

Where Are the Opportunities?

- US may be the best place to prospect for "long" emerging opportunities - volatility, lack of transparency, confusion, over-leverage, lack of homogeneity in products,long-term stability, and government intervention - but it is still too soon
--> Fiscal intervention, Fed cuts, Project Lifeline only postpone and aggravate the inevitable
--> The market will clear when allowed to find its own bottom

- Best place to prospect for "short" emerging market opportunities is in countries that believe they are decoupled from this mess
--> Keep an eye in China, Japan, and Korea
- Best place to prospect for "normalized" investments with growth characteristics on a risk-adjusted basis maybe parts of the Middle East and Russia - India and China challenging at this point
- Everyone will need infrastructure money as traditional project finance sources atrophy - Municipal Bond Crisis maybe around the corner - $2.7 trillion of guaranteed municipal debt
- General economy is actually quite good - what we're experiencing is a financial Pac Man virus

All Excesses return to the mean ... but they first return to the opposite Excess before swinging back tot he mean ... the early bird gets ... SHOT
- General Philosophy
--> Wild, Wild West is now the East
--> Scalability of investing large amounts is the challenge
--> Long global blue chips and emerging markets, but when? - short until then
--> One-off opportunities are too complex and time consuming - those that control the pipeline will control the opportunity
- The Parade Has Not Yet Begun
--> The parade of horribles is forming - impending distress and follow-on inflation is the "quantum leap" investment opportunity of the decade
--> Defaults in corporate bonds, CMBS, RMBS, CLO's, auto loans, credit card loans, and counterparty guarantees have not yet started - they are in the middle of a waterfall which is starting to trickle
- March 31st will be the Ides Of March