Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Latitude Post

One Golden Rule To Heed Before Investing In A High Risk Venture

Posted on June 10, 2020 by Nicholas Peart

Before you decide to invest in a company, start-up or venture that is highly risky, there is one very important rule that all investors should heed. We are all aware of the obvious rules such as doing sufficient due diligence and only investing what we can truly afford to lose. However, a less obvious rule, and the one which I am talking about in this article, is focused on having Skin In The Game.

The origin of this phrase is debatable although a quick Wikipedia search tells me that it originates from derby races whereby the owners of the horses taking part in these races have ‘skin’ in ‘the game’. More recently, it has been written about extensively in the works of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Put simply, it refers to how much ‘skin’ a person has in something or how much personal risk they are willing to take on. For example, in the case of entrepreneurs or founders of businesses, an entrepreneur who has the vast majority of their net wealth tied up in their business has considerable Skin In The Game. Even though they will be handsomely rewarded if the company is successful, they will also go down with the ship and face financial ruin if the company goes belly up. This latter point is crucial.

When I analyse high risk ventures, one thing that is a huge red flag for me is a genuine absence of Skin In The Game. A founder or director of such a company needs to have the majority of their own capital invested. ‘Share options’ do not count. However, ‘director buys’ do.

Another red flag is when founders and directors draw huge salaries, especially if the company is not currently generating any revenues. If a company is not yet making money, a company will be raising money via debt or equity placings (issuing more shares) to keep it a going concern. This is precious cash and should not be eaten up in the form of generous remuneration packages. Alarm bells should be ringing if this is the case.

Founders and directors who have a considerable amount of Skin In The Game in a venture is an indication not only that they truly believe in what they are working on and executing, but also that they are motivated and kept under a considerable amount of pressure to ensure that the company succeeds. They believe in the company so much that they are more than willing to match their considerable belief via taking on a considerable amount of personal monetary risk. If the company doesn’t succeed they will be financially ruined. There will be no government or organisation ready to bail them out if they fail.

I have seen so many high risk ventures collapse where the founders and directors have come out of the wreckage mostly unharmed. They always drew big salaries and their equity stakes were mostly in the form of options rather than purchased with their own money. Founders and directors with little to no Skin In The Game are not under any acute pressure to contribute in the best ways they can. They don’t believe in the company they are working for nor is their heart really in it. It is merely a gravy train.

Thus, before deciding to invest in a company, start-up, venture or anything that is highly risky, one should always ask, ‘How much Skin In The Game do the founders and directors have?’

By Nicholas Peart

Image: valueresearchonline.com

THE FOLLY OF MARKET TIMING: Focusing On Percentages Not Prices

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Nicholas Peart

It is natural to get in the habit of trying to buy or sell shares at a particular price. Sometimes we may get lucky and reach our desired entry or exit point. Other times, we may not always get what we want in this respect. I fall into this trap myself a lot of the time, yet, perhaps unwittingly, am I playing a mugs game?

The future is uncertain. Nobody can predict the future and don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. I have written articles where I have talked about where I think certain things may be going, but the truth is anything can happen. I know nothing. Even if we have deep and unmatched levels of foresight we can so very easily, in the words of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, be fooled by randomness. We can be knocked off our perch by completely random and unforeseen events way out of our control. This is one reason why it is important to have a diversified and balanced investment portfolio. If one sector or stock is particularly badly hit by some unexpected event, at least your other investments in other stocks and sectors are not affected. That old chestnut of ‘not keeping all your eggs in one basket’, whilst it may sound hackneyed, still rings true.

Whilst we may or may not be able to get our desired buy or sell price for a particular stock, one thing we do have complete control over is how we weigh and structure our investment portfolios. There may be a company you highly rate and want to invest in, but you want to invest in it at the right price. Right now, you consider the current price too high and have lower price in mind that you hope will arrive. But what happens if that price never comes and instead the share price of the company just continues to climb in value? Instead of hoping to get the right price, or worse, the lowest price, why not say to yourself, ‘What percentage of my total investment portfolio do I want this company or security to represent?’. I think dealing in percentages rather than prices can not only help you to be a better investor, as it can take away a lot of the unnecessary stress and anxiety associated with trying to buy or sell a security at ‘the right price’. It can also help you overcome deeply ingrained cognitive biases.

When you focus more on what percentage of your investment portfolio you want a security to represent, rather than chasing a price, that can give you more control and balance. If the investment goes down in value, the percentage weighting it represents in your portfolio also goes down. If the investment goes up in value, it’s percentage weighting also goes up. By this you can then decide whether you want to be more overweight or underweight in the percentage weight of this particular security. If you want to be more overweight, you buy more. If you want to be more underweight, you sell a portion.

The percentage of what a security represents of your total portfolio is in many ways more important than the price you pay for it. Even if you end up overpaying for a stock or security, if it represents a percentage of your portfolio that is not too detrimental to the overall performance than it is not so bad.

By Nicholas Peart

Image: datanami.com

Fooled By Randomness

Posted on December 9, 2018December 9, 2018 by Nicholas Peart

dice - luck

In one of my previous posts I talk about how hard work is more important than talent when it comes to achieving success. As much as I don’t want to believe it there is a kernel of truth to this. But is it the whole truth? What if it is the power of randomness that is the principle factor in all this? At least this is what the Lebanese-American writer and former financial trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb believes whose seminal books Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan expand on this idea.

One of the most interesting aspects of success, especially in creative fields, is that it often comes to people we least expect it to. It is not unusual to watch an unknown band live and think ‘what on earth is this crap’. Then several months later that same band is flying high in the charts and many people are fawning over them. On the other hand, you can see an unknown band live who you are totally blown away by and are convinced the band will go on to greater things but success sadly eludes them and they continue to drift into obscurity. These typical scenarios give a lot of weight to Taleb’s theory of randomness.

Even though, at least at a practical level, hard work seems to be the best way to increase one’s chances of getting lucky is that really where it’s all at? Again in the context of musicians, some singer/songwriters worked their butts off on the open-mic night circuit playing at everyplace they could get a gig and then slowly after years of toil and sweat, they were rewarded. The supremely successful singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran is a perfect example here. But he does not escape the laws of randomness. Many other singer/songwriters also break their backs for years trying to make it, but alas their time never comes.

On the other side of the scales one can look at the pre-fame story of Oasis. They’d barely been going for a year or two before they were discovered in 1993 by the head of Creation records, Alan McGee, at a gig in Glasgow. From that point on success came to the band almost overnight. It was as if their success and destiny were written in the stars. The Oasis story is a perfect one of randomness and demolishes the adage of ‘if one works hard one will be rewarded’. Whether one likes Oasis or not, one cannot deny the powerful magnetism the Gallagher brothers possessed; something that seemed God-given and effortless, and millions of people lapped it up.

Life is never linear. Our predictions regarding the life trajectory of others often collapse like a house of cards. Random events beyond our control destabilizes these paths. When we look at the following world events; the Chernobyl nuclear explosion, the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash, 9/11, the recent Genoa bridge collapse etc; they are examples of events which weren’t anticipated and took people by surprise. Taleb calls them Black Swan events.

It is not uncommon to weave a narrative around these events and try to rationalise and justify them, but the truth is they were ruled by randomness and caught everyone off-guard.

By Nicholas Peart

image: PIRO4D