When I was younger, I worked as an intern at one of the most successful and prestigious global funds managers in my home country. This company was renowned for their ability to think unconventionally, and was the only funds manager that called a major share market crash a few months before it happened. I learned a lot in just a few months working there.
In those days, their methods for share analysis were highly unconventional.
Let me give some examples. If the analyst wanted to understand a company, they’d go and talk with the company’s suppliers, customers, competitors, industry bodies, and so on. In order to understand inflation, they wouldn’t analyse or try to forecast the inflation rates (which are lagging indicators of inflation) – they’d go to the local milk bar or shops and ask the owners what they see happening to prices and demand.
I remember walking past the desks of the funds managers, and seeing stacks of broker research reports piled more than a meter high.
One day I asked one of the analysts how they ever managed to read and absorb so much information.
His answer was simple, powerful, and incredibly profound:
We don’t.
He told me that most people tend to think in the same way. (Also, they recognised that people don’t like to be different or wrong, and so they play safe and stay with the crowd.)
So, the analysts skim the research reports, and find those who think unconventionally, or have a different viewpoint. They would then look at those reports in more depth, and consider whether what they have to say might have any value, and go from there. They’d dispose of the rest of the research reports without reading them in any depth.
I’ve used that way of thinking for many years now.
It is part of the method I use to incorporate different approaches into my teaching, and how I’m thinking about creating my own VYL English language course and language school.
