Continuing coverage, we're posting up notes from the Value Investing Congress. Below are notes from the presentation of John Mauldin of Millennium Wave Advisors. His talk was
entitled 'How Will the Elections Affect the Endgame? Finding Value in an Upside Down World.'
He's not a stock picker, but a macroeconomic thinker and writer (author of "Thoughts from the frontline" a newsletter.
Differences between uncertainty and risk: Uncertainty is the "unknown
unknowns" the term used by Rumsfield. The things we don't even know we
don't know. Investors are obsessed with risk. We can model it, it
makes us feel like scientists. We have more ways to quantify risk, yet
me walked into 2008 missing the obvious. We think we can model risk.
Surprises aren't only the bad things, but the good things (like the
invention of the iPhone? or the steam engine)
In 1850 the number one job in the USA was a farm worker, in 1900, it was
personal servant. The cheapest thing was to hire a laborer to do the
hand labor. Uncertainty comes in all forms. The problem with
uncertainty is you can't model it.
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