Based on:
We shall treat all forecasts in pitch books by startups as guesswork, not analysis.
Latest memo from Howard Marks: Knowledge of the Future
As I showed by using it again in last weekās memo, I was impressed by the observation of Marc Lipsitch, Harvard epidemiologist, that there are (a) facts, (b) informed extrapolations from analogies to other viruses and (c) opinion or speculation. He said it in connection with the novel coronavirus, but Iāve been thinking about its relevance to investing.
In the past, Iāve defined investing as the act of positioning capital so as to profit from future developments. Iāve also mentioned the challenge presented by the fact that thereās no such thing as knowing what future developments will be. This is the paradox we must deal with.
To follow Lipsitchās analysis, in our world of investing:
- there are few if any facts regarding the future,
- the vast majority of our theorizing about the future consists of extrapolating from past patterns, and
- a lot of that extrapolation ā and just about all the rest of our conclusions ā consists of what Lipsitch calls opinion or speculation and what I call guesswork. (George Bernard Shaw said, āAll professions are conspiracies against the laity.ā Thus the rules of the investment profession seem to require that its members describe their views about the future using high-sounding terms like āanalysis,ā āassessment,ā āprojection,ā āpredictionā and āforecast.ā Rarely do we see the word āguess.ā)
Last week, in [ Calibrating ](javascript:openPDF(āCalibratingā,ā/docs/default-source/memos/calibrating.pdfā)), I mentioned having written to an Oaktree colleague that, āThese days everyone has the same data regarding the present and the same ignorance regarding the future.ā I chose the title of this memo because itās such an oxymoron: thereās practically no such thing as meaningful knowledge regarding the future investment environment. Thus, this memo will be about some things people think they know but may not.
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