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We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network

TIP579: Big Mistakes by Michael Batnick

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network

Stig Brodersen

Education, Investing, Business

4.6 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2023

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On today’s episode, Clay Finck reviews Michael Batnick’s book, Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments. 

One of the best ways to become a better investor is to learn from our own mistakes. The second best (and less costly) way is to study the mistakes of others. If you want to learn from the mistakes of the world’s greatest investors, then this episode was made for you.


IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:

00:00 - Intro.

01:24 - Lessons from Batnick’s book from studying the mistakes of the world’s greatest investors.

02:18 - How Benjamin Graham lost substantial capital during the great depression.

07:14 - How Jesse Livermore taught us to always limit the potential downside.

12:49 - How Long-Term Capital Management went from billions in AUM to zero almost overnight.

16:40 - Michael Steinhardt’s mistake of stepping outside of his circle of competence.

26:24 - What the endowment effect is.

27:20 - Warren Buffett’s biggest blunder.

29:57 - How Bill Ackman became publicly attached to a short position that went against him.

37:32 - How Stan Druckenmiller got suckered into the 1999 tech bubble.

49:21 - The dark side of concentrated investing.

54:50 - How Keynes transitioned from being a macro investor to a bottoms up value investor.


Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences.


BOOKS AND RESOURCES


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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

You're listening to TIP.

0:03.2

One of the best ways to become a better investor is by learning from our own mistakes.

0:08.1

The next best way is probably to learn from the mistakes of others.

0:11.8

Not only is it less painful to do so, but it's also less expensive.

0:16.0

So I picked up Michael Batnik's book called Big Mistakes, The Best Investors in their

0:20.4

Worst Investment Mistakes.

0:22.5

Michael Batnik is a director of research at Ritholds Wealth Management and he wrote

0:26.3

this incredible book here that I really enjoyed.

0:29.0

But I think the listeners are really going to enjoy this episode as well as I share my

0:32.6

takeaways from reading through it.

0:34.2

The book dives into the stories of Benjamin Graham, Jesse Livermore, Mark Twain, Long-Term

0:38.9

Capital Management, Bill Ackman, Stanley Drunkamiller, among others, and it dives into their biggest

0:43.9

mistakes that costed many of them billions of dollars.

0:46.9

If you enjoy this episode, then I'd encourage you to also pick up Batnik's book called Big

0:51.2

Mistakes, which we'll include a link in the show notes for those who are interested.

0:55.5

This was a really fun one to read and record as the stories in it are interesting as you'll

0:59.3

find out here shortly.

1:01.1

With that, let's get right to it.

1:03.6

You are listening to the Investors podcast where we study the financial markets and read

1:11.9

the books that influence self-made billionaires the most.

1:15.1

We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected.

1:27.4

Making money in the stock market is an incredibly difficult task.

...

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