Investing is an activity that always comes with risks. Every time we have to think about a fixed investment, sooner or later we have to ask ourselves what are the risks associated with this investment? Investing is an environment where the certainty of the future is purely a product of the imagination, but unfortunately this is the product that is being sold most to the inexperienced class of investors who are just starting out. learn about the market. It is not difficult for us to come across many stock investment courses online that promise to give investors the formula to beat the market, technical tools that always guarantee profitability, or simply the best words. the bullshit of the brokers' heads.
In investing, as in life, there is nothing an investor can do that can give a sense of certainty that the end result will be what you want, uncertainty in the future will always be a constant. Numbers never change, especially in the investment environment, and investors have no choice but to learn to accept this fact. Therefore, once imbued with this principle, smart investors will also know that the most reliable fraud warning signal in investment is the opposite of the above truth - the promise to guarantee profits. profits in the future. In multi-level language, it is a commitment of X% profit in a fixed period of time Y. Every time you hear the four words "profit commitment" from someone who is talking nonsense about an investment project, you better hold your wallet tightly
Because the future is always associated with uncertainty, learning how to deal with uncertainty in investing is learning how to think probabilistically in the most objective way. In other words, the most famous investors in the world are basically people who think like professional Poker players!
How to properly receive new information?
Thomas Bayes was an English pastor who lived in the early 18th century. For those who have specialized in statistical probability or machine learning, Bayes is not an unfamiliar name - he is the father to of today's famous Bayes theorem. In Nate Silver's famous book Signal and noises, the author gives a perfect example of how to think in the Bayesian style:
Let's assume that there is a man who has just been given life in a world of which he has no knowledge at all. Seeing the sun rise for the first time in his life, he screamed in panic and sought refuge from its sunlight. He didn't know if this "sunrise" phenomenon was normal or just a madness in the world. However, day by day when he saw the sunrise, he became more and more certain that this was a constant phenomenon, not a coincidence. The first day when he saw the sunrise, he was not sure if the sun would be seen again tomorrow. However, this probability number will gradually increase (but will never reach 100%) with the number of days in the future he continues to see the sun rise.
Bayes' theorem is very simple: when we make a prediction about the probability of something happening in the future, it is a never-ending process where the number of probabilities is continuously updated with each Every time a new piece of data comes in, we have to change our prediction. We never start this number with 0% or 100% because Bayesian thinking doesn't allow you to say something will or will never happen. Bayesian thinking is a constantly evolving system, with each new data update bringing our probabilistic predictions closer and closer to the Truth.
Bayes' theorem is an assertion that all we know about the future is a guess based on probability, and this number will never be fixed but will always change over time as new information becomes available. appears to force us to update our conjecture. In the ironic way we often hear, one thing for sure about the future is that nothing is certain. Bayesian thinking forces us to admit that our understanding of the world is very shallow, and that we are constantly updating information in the hope that our numbers come closer and closer to Accuracy (but it will never 100%). To do this, we must first admit to ourselves that we are not really sure about anything in the future. To get closer and closer to the Truth, open-minded thinking is essential, and confirmation bias is a dangerous enemy that needs to be eliminated.
Consciously or unconsciously, professional poker players and investors alike employ the best of Bayesian thinking in their work. They always think about possible future events as probabilistic numbers, constantly update this number with new data in real time, and are ready to bet big when the probability is extremely beneficial to itself. Like playing Poker, smart investors are always ready to bet big when the odds of winning are very high, although this number has never reached 100%.
Similarities Between Investing and Poker
Legendary Poker player Doyle Brunson, who is known as the Godfather of Poker, once said a sentence that changed the entire opinion of the writer in the early days of participating in this game:
Poker is not just a game of winning or losing. Basically, Poker is the art of making the most accurate decisions in any uncertain situation. You have to know when to bet more, when to discard, and when to All-in.
Like all novice players when learning about Poker, the writer only thinks about Poker purely through the lens of winning money or losing money without looking into other aspects of the game. Most new poker players think that Poker is just gambling and that the ultimate aim of this game is to try to win as much money as possible. In fact, the above goal is not necessarily wrong, but if you focus on pure winning and losing, the player's skills can never develop to new heights. Poker is a sport where skill and luck both play a role in determining the final outcome of the player, and the player's skill is always proportional to the efficiency of the final decision-making process. in the entire game. Most realistically, the highest level of poker players are always the ones who are able to make the most accurate decisions in extremely uncertain situations. What is the best decision in uncertain situations? The simple answer is that decisions are based purely on probabilities of what might happen in the future.
In Poker, a hand can play out in many different ways with different proportions of probability, and so a player's skill is shown when they are most likely to sniff correctly. whether the probability is in your favor or not. To put it simply, every time a player places chips on the table, the true essence of that bet is a decision about a possible future scenario in the hand. The higher a player's confidence in the prospect of the future in their favor, the higher the stakes will be. In other words, the number of bets represents the player's level of confidence in the possible outcome of the hand (the writer does not include the case of bluffing, that is a completely different category of Poker). ). The more confident players are in their ability to win in the future, the more willing they are to bet big. And so the player who is able to estimate his probability of winning most accurately, the more optimal the final decision-making process.
However, professional Poker players are also wise enough to understand that 80% win rate also means 20% lose rate, on average they will have 4 wins for every 5 hands of the same hand. and lost 1 time. And if the other 20% happens to lead to the loss of their bets, they don't really care about it, they basically understand that they made the correct decision but luck smiled. smile at your opponent. Professional Poker players fully accept the uncertainty of the game, they understand that even if they can make all the correct decisions in a hand, there is still a chance that they could lose money due to the uncertainty of the game. influence of the element of luck, but they also know that in the long run the people who are most likely to make the most correct decisions based on probability will always be the final winners in the game called Poker.
The investment process is similar to the decision-making process in Poker. Uncertainty is always part of the game, a smart investment has the potential to lose money, and a stupid investment decision has the potential to pay off, at least in the short term. But smart investors are never short-term players, what they really aim for is the long-term end result. It is only when the market goes through a period of excitement and begins to enter a period of depression that we really know who is the real fox in the market.
Small bets, big bets, and discards
If you have a 90% win in a hand of Poker, the most obvious thing is that you want as much stake on the table as possible. But if you are the opponent, who only has 10% of winnings and understands the rules of Poker like you, why should they accept to place more money with only 10% winning rate?
Or let the writer take another example that is easier to understand, if you are an English football fan, you know that Liverpool are one of the strongest teams this season, and their opponent tomorrow is Norwich City , one of the weakest team. Everyone knows that Liverpool have a high win rate and everyone wants to bet on the possibility that Liverpool will win tomorrow, but if so, who will be on the other end of the bet, who will be the fool? bet on the possibility that Norwich City will win?
The obvious answer is that it completely depends on the level of the odds, if the bet on Liverpool bets 3 to 2 while the bet on Norwich City places 1 to 100 then the player doesn't really have a choice at this point. Choose obvious attraction. Liverpool has a higher chance of winning, but placing 3 only eats 2, while Norwich City of course has a very high loss rate, but placing 1 will eat up to 100, at this time, the player really understands that there is no meal. which is free on the betting market. Football betting, the odds are very clear in each ball game but this information is completely hidden in Poker and investing. Poker players and investors must estimate this ratio for themselves and make the final reasonable decision.
In Poker, if you only have a 10% win, the only reason you would be willing to put more money into the hand is when the amount you win when that 10% happens has to be greater than the odds of placing 1 to 10. This means that if you had to put an extra $100 on the hand with a 10% win rate, you would only do this when the winnings were greater than $1000. On an average of 10 similar hands, you will win 1 and lose 9 times, so you want to make sure that the 10% chance of winning is greater than the total loss in the remaining 9 games. This is a basic concept in Poker, but to put it into practice in investment, there are specific difficulties as follows:
1. You cannot know the exact win rate in each investment.
2. You also don't know exactly how much profit you can make if the deal goes through.
In Poker there are some basic math tricks for Poker players to calculate roughly what their probability of winning is in each hand, but this is a luxury in the investment world. It is difficult for investors to give a specific number for the probability of success as well as the rate of return for each potential investment, the most likely thing they can do is give a range. estimates, and the more experienced the investor, the more likely he is to give an estimate that is closest to reality. And like professional poker players, experienced investors are always ready to bet big when the probability of winning as well as the potential profit rate is extremely favorable for them. Basically, the action to invest money in the market is similar to the action of placing chips on the Poker table, which is an expression of confidence in the player's ability to win in the future. The greater the confidence, the bigger the stake, and vice versa. As the Godfather of Poker Doyle Brunson once said, "Basically, Poker is the art of making the best decisions in any uncertain situation. You have to know when to put more money, when to discard, and when to discard. Which should be All-in".
In Poker, the hand you are playing is similar to the investment you are considering to lose money in the market, the question that the wise player must always answer is:
Is this an attractive deal with the odds of winning as well as the odds being extremely favorable for you?
1. If the answer is an absolute affirmation, you bet big.
2. If the answer is probably maybe, you bet small.
3. If the answer is no, you simply discard.
In life nothing is certain, but this also does not mean that everything is 50/50 as many people mistakenly believe, in reality there will always be things with a higher probability of happening. with other things, but always remember that a low probability does not mean it will never happen, things no matter how small the probability, as long as the sample set is large enough, nothing is a problem. cannot happen. For successful investing, the betting mindset is one of the most important skills in investing simply because the Bayesian model is one of the best tools an investor can use to deal with volatility. future determination. Learn to accept the uncertainty of the future as well as the irrefutable probabilistic nature of the investment game, and investors will begin to have a more rational mental model when thinking about prospects. of potential future investments.
In investing, as in life, there is nothing an investor can do that can give a sense of certainty that the end result will be what you want, uncertainty in the future will always be a constant. Numbers never change, especially in the investment environment, and investors have no choice but to learn to accept this fact. Therefore, once imbued with this principle, smart investors will also know that the most reliable fraud warning signal in investment is the opposite of the above truth - the promise to guarantee profits. profits in the future. In multi-level language, it is a commitment of X% profit in a fixed period of time Y. Every time you hear the four words "profit commitment" from someone who is talking nonsense about an investment project, you better hold your wallet tightly
Because the future is always associated with uncertainty, learning how to deal with uncertainty in investing is learning how to think probabilistically in the most objective way. In other words, the most famous investors in the world are basically people who think like professional Poker players!
How to properly receive new information?
Thomas Bayes was an English pastor who lived in the early 18th century. For those who have specialized in statistical probability or machine learning, Bayes is not an unfamiliar name - he is the father to of today's famous Bayes theorem. In Nate Silver's famous book Signal and noises, the author gives a perfect example of how to think in the Bayesian style:
Let's assume that there is a man who has just been given life in a world of which he has no knowledge at all. Seeing the sun rise for the first time in his life, he screamed in panic and sought refuge from its sunlight. He didn't know if this "sunrise" phenomenon was normal or just a madness in the world. However, day by day when he saw the sunrise, he became more and more certain that this was a constant phenomenon, not a coincidence. The first day when he saw the sunrise, he was not sure if the sun would be seen again tomorrow. However, this probability number will gradually increase (but will never reach 100%) with the number of days in the future he continues to see the sun rise.
Bayes' theorem is very simple: when we make a prediction about the probability of something happening in the future, it is a never-ending process where the number of probabilities is continuously updated with each Every time a new piece of data comes in, we have to change our prediction. We never start this number with 0% or 100% because Bayesian thinking doesn't allow you to say something will or will never happen. Bayesian thinking is a constantly evolving system, with each new data update bringing our probabilistic predictions closer and closer to the Truth.
Bayes' theorem is an assertion that all we know about the future is a guess based on probability, and this number will never be fixed but will always change over time as new information becomes available. appears to force us to update our conjecture. In the ironic way we often hear, one thing for sure about the future is that nothing is certain. Bayesian thinking forces us to admit that our understanding of the world is very shallow, and that we are constantly updating information in the hope that our numbers come closer and closer to Accuracy (but it will never 100%). To do this, we must first admit to ourselves that we are not really sure about anything in the future. To get closer and closer to the Truth, open-minded thinking is essential, and confirmation bias is a dangerous enemy that needs to be eliminated.
Consciously or unconsciously, professional poker players and investors alike employ the best of Bayesian thinking in their work. They always think about possible future events as probabilistic numbers, constantly update this number with new data in real time, and are ready to bet big when the probability is extremely beneficial to itself. Like playing Poker, smart investors are always ready to bet big when the odds of winning are very high, although this number has never reached 100%.
Similarities Between Investing and Poker
Legendary Poker player Doyle Brunson, who is known as the Godfather of Poker, once said a sentence that changed the entire opinion of the writer in the early days of participating in this game:
Poker is not just a game of winning or losing. Basically, Poker is the art of making the most accurate decisions in any uncertain situation. You have to know when to bet more, when to discard, and when to All-in.
Like all novice players when learning about Poker, the writer only thinks about Poker purely through the lens of winning money or losing money without looking into other aspects of the game. Most new poker players think that Poker is just gambling and that the ultimate aim of this game is to try to win as much money as possible. In fact, the above goal is not necessarily wrong, but if you focus on pure winning and losing, the player's skills can never develop to new heights. Poker is a sport where skill and luck both play a role in determining the final outcome of the player, and the player's skill is always proportional to the efficiency of the final decision-making process. in the entire game. Most realistically, the highest level of poker players are always the ones who are able to make the most accurate decisions in extremely uncertain situations. What is the best decision in uncertain situations? The simple answer is that decisions are based purely on probabilities of what might happen in the future.
In Poker, a hand can play out in many different ways with different proportions of probability, and so a player's skill is shown when they are most likely to sniff correctly. whether the probability is in your favor or not. To put it simply, every time a player places chips on the table, the true essence of that bet is a decision about a possible future scenario in the hand. The higher a player's confidence in the prospect of the future in their favor, the higher the stakes will be. In other words, the number of bets represents the player's level of confidence in the possible outcome of the hand (the writer does not include the case of bluffing, that is a completely different category of Poker). ). The more confident players are in their ability to win in the future, the more willing they are to bet big. And so the player who is able to estimate his probability of winning most accurately, the more optimal the final decision-making process.
However, professional Poker players are also wise enough to understand that 80% win rate also means 20% lose rate, on average they will have 4 wins for every 5 hands of the same hand. and lost 1 time. And if the other 20% happens to lead to the loss of their bets, they don't really care about it, they basically understand that they made the correct decision but luck smiled. smile at your opponent. Professional Poker players fully accept the uncertainty of the game, they understand that even if they can make all the correct decisions in a hand, there is still a chance that they could lose money due to the uncertainty of the game. influence of the element of luck, but they also know that in the long run the people who are most likely to make the most correct decisions based on probability will always be the final winners in the game called Poker.
The investment process is similar to the decision-making process in Poker. Uncertainty is always part of the game, a smart investment has the potential to lose money, and a stupid investment decision has the potential to pay off, at least in the short term. But smart investors are never short-term players, what they really aim for is the long-term end result. It is only when the market goes through a period of excitement and begins to enter a period of depression that we really know who is the real fox in the market.
Small bets, big bets, and discards
If you have a 90% win in a hand of Poker, the most obvious thing is that you want as much stake on the table as possible. But if you are the opponent, who only has 10% of winnings and understands the rules of Poker like you, why should they accept to place more money with only 10% winning rate?
Or let the writer take another example that is easier to understand, if you are an English football fan, you know that Liverpool are one of the strongest teams this season, and their opponent tomorrow is Norwich City , one of the weakest team. Everyone knows that Liverpool have a high win rate and everyone wants to bet on the possibility that Liverpool will win tomorrow, but if so, who will be on the other end of the bet, who will be the fool? bet on the possibility that Norwich City will win?
The obvious answer is that it completely depends on the level of the odds, if the bet on Liverpool bets 3 to 2 while the bet on Norwich City places 1 to 100 then the player doesn't really have a choice at this point. Choose obvious attraction. Liverpool has a higher chance of winning, but placing 3 only eats 2, while Norwich City of course has a very high loss rate, but placing 1 will eat up to 100, at this time, the player really understands that there is no meal. which is free on the betting market. Football betting, the odds are very clear in each ball game but this information is completely hidden in Poker and investing. Poker players and investors must estimate this ratio for themselves and make the final reasonable decision.
In Poker, if you only have a 10% win, the only reason you would be willing to put more money into the hand is when the amount you win when that 10% happens has to be greater than the odds of placing 1 to 10. This means that if you had to put an extra $100 on the hand with a 10% win rate, you would only do this when the winnings were greater than $1000. On an average of 10 similar hands, you will win 1 and lose 9 times, so you want to make sure that the 10% chance of winning is greater than the total loss in the remaining 9 games. This is a basic concept in Poker, but to put it into practice in investment, there are specific difficulties as follows:
1. You cannot know the exact win rate in each investment.
2. You also don't know exactly how much profit you can make if the deal goes through.
In Poker there are some basic math tricks for Poker players to calculate roughly what their probability of winning is in each hand, but this is a luxury in the investment world. It is difficult for investors to give a specific number for the probability of success as well as the rate of return for each potential investment, the most likely thing they can do is give a range. estimates, and the more experienced the investor, the more likely he is to give an estimate that is closest to reality. And like professional poker players, experienced investors are always ready to bet big when the probability of winning as well as the potential profit rate is extremely favorable for them. Basically, the action to invest money in the market is similar to the action of placing chips on the Poker table, which is an expression of confidence in the player's ability to win in the future. The greater the confidence, the bigger the stake, and vice versa. As the Godfather of Poker Doyle Brunson once said, "Basically, Poker is the art of making the best decisions in any uncertain situation. You have to know when to put more money, when to discard, and when to discard. Which should be All-in".
In Poker, the hand you are playing is similar to the investment you are considering to lose money in the market, the question that the wise player must always answer is:
Is this an attractive deal with the odds of winning as well as the odds being extremely favorable for you?
1. If the answer is an absolute affirmation, you bet big.
2. If the answer is probably maybe, you bet small.
3. If the answer is no, you simply discard.
In life nothing is certain, but this also does not mean that everything is 50/50 as many people mistakenly believe, in reality there will always be things with a higher probability of happening. with other things, but always remember that a low probability does not mean it will never happen, things no matter how small the probability, as long as the sample set is large enough, nothing is a problem. cannot happen. For successful investing, the betting mindset is one of the most important skills in investing simply because the Bayesian model is one of the best tools an investor can use to deal with volatility. future determination. Learn to accept the uncertainty of the future as well as the irrefutable probabilistic nature of the investment game, and investors will begin to have a more rational mental model when thinking about prospects. of potential future investments.