Seth Klarman: Price is the essential determinant in every investment equation

[weijian]

Too big an investing team can result in very poor decision making. My prior firm had a team of 4 and you should have seen the inertia, biases and indecisiveness. I strongly believe that portfolio managers shouldn't outsource their analysis.

End of the day, it just show that the market is a humbling one and unbiased against the friendly, the arrogant, the smart, the lazy, etc. I am always learning from mistakes and always adjusting with it -- guess that's what make the journey enjoyably dynamic too and hopefully nothing too big to blow up the port co.

Well, one noticeable thing about Seth is that his capital did get larger and larger over the years. So headwinds from style, his increasing capital also slowly worked against him too. And with this increasing capital, probably came the bigger investing team to increase their investable universe, whether in depth or breadth. 

Sometimes, a bigger team works. Sometimes it doesn't. I chose to start the year by reading Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. Vividly remember that in all his startups (now no more startups of course), every item needs to have a name attached to it. And the designers work besides the engineers.

The market reminds me of UFC MMA (Ultimate Fighting Championship Mixed Martial Arts). No champion or style dominates all the time. To be a champ, one needs to know all the skills/styles, although their expertise may be in just one or two. And if the champ stops working, his/her weaknesses will be figured out in no time by his hungry opponents looking to strip the title off him.