So, one thought that I have when I read Enoch's comment is this:
many times, no most of the time, the successful speculator cannot explain what how he did it. Can you explain how to drive a car? How good of results would you get, do you think, if when you were 16, rather than be tutored and go through hands-on practice, you were to read a book by Mario Andretti called
How to Drive Like Me, then, never having touched a steering wheel, show up for the drivers' test?
Speculation is a skill that involves a lot of intuition, a lot of intangible, indescribable elements, just like driving. You can't give a good idea of what to do by text alone.
Second,
many times he himself does not know how he did it. If asked, he may say "oh, these five indicators clearly showed that this was going to happen," and describe the air-tight reasoning that he went through, but if you could look inside his mind at the time he was making the decision, that almost certainly wasn't actually his mental process. Maybe it was a hunch. An intangible. Maybe he saw a pattern that reminded him of other similar patterns he'd seen in the past. Maybe he just got lucky.
Almost certainly he just got lucky.
But whatever it was, it probably wasn't what he will tell you it was. Not because he is lying, but because he doesn't actually know. The process was intuitive, not entirely conscious and step-by-step rational.
~~~
There are posters here who are convinced that the Benjamin Graham formula as described in
Graham's book is how Warren Buffett got rich.
It's not. They are convinced that if they just read a book (or three) and then devote a few hours a week to arranging their investments to follow that formula, they will have performance like Buffett, too.
They won't.
Easier for me to pick stocks , LOL
