Collection: Li Lu - #28 'Keep Learning Even If There Is No Opportunity'
[Transcript]
AUDIENCE MEMBER 00:00
How many companies do you invest in a year?
LI LU 00:03
Well, it depends.
You know, there will be probably – the average is meaningless because the opportunities are different. You know, there might be years you don't really have a lot of opportunity and there might be years you have a lot of opportunity. You just sorts of – it all depends on what really becomes available to you.
But one thing I can guarantee is, they don't really come in steady pace. I don't really have a steady kind of once a month, once a week type of idea, never had that throughout my career.
Back into the times, you know, when I started this thing 15 years ago when I was at Columbia, at the time I was an undergraduate student when I bought (my first stock), I think throughout that maybe 5-6 years of when I was in school at college, law school and business school, maybe I had 3-4 big ideas that really paid off big. And, you know, how do you average that out? (Laughs)
And then afterwards, you know, I get a little bit better. You know, the thing about this approach is you progressively get better and better and better. To the point you look at a page like that, it takes you, you know, a couple of minutes to tell you right away whether something could jump out, you can smell it when you see something.
So you get better and better and better. So you might actually have more opportunity or the market is just not cooperating and you don't have a lot of opportunity – good ideas, a year goes by, that's okay.
But I do not want a whole year goes by where I did not learn anything, I did not establish a good insight or at least I thought it was a good insight or destroy the insight I thought I have. You want to go through everyday by learning something, it’s a good mental discipline to have. And a year goes by, you have to learn a great deal.
(Source: https://youtu.be/y3c2PKupiu8)
[YAPSS Takeaway]
It's okay if you did not invest in anything for a year or more. But it's not okay to let a year goes by without learning anything.
"I do not want a whole year goes by where I did not learn anything, I did not establish a good insight or at least I thought it was a good insight or destroy the insight I thought I have. You want to go through everyday by learning something, it’s a good mental discipline to have. And a year goes by, you have to learn a great deal." ~Li Lu
