Do introverts make better investors?

[specuvestor]

IMHO I don't think it is extrovert or introvert

I think it is passion and focus. Probably that's why I think autistic people like Mike Burry will make good investors. And Buffett is well known of being so focus on his passion that he can't even take care of himself. As much as I learn investment from him, I wouldn't envy his personal life.

中庸之道 Life is more than just investments

[CityFarmer]

Investment is like growing and managing a garden.

It takes a lot of work, but at the same time, a lot of work does not mean plants will grow any faster. Watching plants grow can be quite... meditative.

IMO, not that similar... Pests can attack and kill your plants. In gardening, you're in control and can use pesticide or if it's caterpillars, physically remove them... In investments, unless you have a controlling stake, there's nothing much you can do to counter external threats. The only thing is to sell and switch to other stocks... which is what you could also do for your plants, change them to other more hardy plants...

I have a similar view, investment is like farming (or garnering, depending on the scale). In fact, this is the mindset to approach investment, including equity investment.

IMO, the use of pesticide for pest control is equivalent to hedging in investment. But we all know that no effective hedging available for market crash, the equivalent to natural disastrous for farming e.g. locust swarms, drought or typhoon.

BTW, the analogy of reservoir system is interesting, and should has no conflict among the two I assume...

[yeokiwi]

Investment is like growing and managing a garden.

It takes a lot of work, but at the same time, a lot of work does not mean plants will grow any faster. Watching plants grow can be quite... meditative.

IMO, not that similar... Pests can attack and kill your plants. In gardening, you're in control and can use pesticide or if it's caterpillars, physically remove them... In investments, unless you have a controlling stake, there's nothing much you can do to counter external threats. The only thing is to sell and switch to other stocks... which is what you could also do for your plants, change them to other more hardy plants...

I have a similar view, investment is like farming (or garnering, depending on the scale). In fact, this is the mindset to approach investment, including equity investment.

IMO, the use of pesticide for pest control is equivalent to hedging in investment. But we all know that no effective hedging available for market crash, the equivalent to natural disastrous for farming e.g. locust swarms, drought or typhoon.

BTW, the analogy of reservoir system is interesting, and should has no conflict among the two I assume...

It takes quite a lot of time to have a blooming garden.
Try not to get too impatient. It takes at least 3-4 years to have a flower plant in full bloom.
Without fail, I will buy quality seeds from reputable merchants. There are cheap seeds from other sources but they are generally more misses than hits.
Lousy seeds may turn up to be weeds and do not bloom and start to deplete the garden's nutrients. After a while, you will have to keep topping up the fertilizers in the hope that they may bloom.
Not to mention that they are such an eye sore when you look at your garden every morning.

There are also gardeners that, after a while, give up and refuse to look at the gardens. It is better to weed out the eye sores with some pain rather than ignoring it totally.

[CityFarmer]

Investment is like growing and managing a garden.

It takes a lot of work, but at the same time, a lot of work does not mean plants will grow any faster. Watching plants grow can be quite... meditative.

IMO, not that similar... Pests can attack and kill your plants. In gardening, you're in control and can use pesticide or if it's caterpillars, physically remove them... In investments, unless you have a controlling stake, there's nothing much you can do to counter external threats. The only thing is to sell and switch to other stocks... which is what you could also do for your plants, change them to other more hardy plants...

I have a similar view, investment is like farming (or garnering, depending on the scale). In fact, this is the mindset to approach investment, including equity investment.

IMO, the use of pesticide for pest control is equivalent to hedging in investment. But we all know that no effective hedging available for market crash, the equivalent to natural disastrous for farming e.g. locust swarms, drought or typhoon.

BTW, the analogy of reservoir system is interesting, and should has no conflict among the two I assume...

It takes quite a lot of time to have a blooming garden.
Try not to get too impatient. It takes at least 3-4 years to have a flower plant in full bloom.
Without fail, I will buy quality seeds from reputable merchants. There are cheap seeds from other sources but they are generally more misses than hits.
Lousy seeds may turn up to be weeds and do not bloom and start to deplete the garden's nutrients. After a while, you will have to keep topping up the fertilizers in the hope that they may bloom.
Not to mention that they are such an eye sore when you look at your garden every morning.

There are also gardeners that, after a while, give up and refuse to look at the gardens. It is better to weed out the eye sores with some pain rather than ignoring it totally.

I concur.

On top of that, there are also opportunities for shorter harvest period e.g. take-over neglected gardens, with a low price from the impatient owners.

[mobo]

To take a step back, I believe in order to have a more meaningful study on how introversion is correlated to successful investing, there needs to be a broad consensus on two key areas:

1) What exactly does being introvert mean other than the layman sense of being quiet and not liking to talk to people? I have read of a few models on human pyschology and cognition and there seems to be no universally adopted methodology on how we can measure and define introversion. In fact some psychoanalytical model such as MBTI define introversion / extroversion quite differently that it is pretty common to have IT nerds, engineers, accountants dorminating the strong extrovert sphere.

2) What exactly consitutes successful investing? This by itself is a conceptual landmine. Within the investment community, there currently is no authoritative agreement on how to measure and judge performance beyond the elementary calculation of absolute returns. While concepts of CAPM and its related derivatives such as Treynor, Sharpe, Alpha seem to be adopted most commonly, they have their fair share of detractors and supportors who acknowledge huge weaknesses in the existing models.

There is also a constant renewal and competiton of alternative models like APM, Omega, M2, each of them purportedly addressing weaknesses in the assumptions of the CAPM while introducing vagaries of their own.

The situation gets even more ambiguous when one attempts to apply relative investment performance measurement over a universal audience where age, individual risk appetitie, country, opportunities, unequal access to information etc. all come into play.

IMO as long as these 2 challenges are not resloved, there is no way to have a meaningful conversation. Any discussion will ultimately descend into the hurling of speculations, anecdotes and baseless conjecture that adds no value to further understanding the topic. To put it in layman parlance - you talk I say who confirm?