Facts and Numbers are Calming

I love reading and seeing hard numbers, they indeed make me embrace a more open thinking.

This book is a financial storytelling book but just as my other experience, knowledge from another discipline often inform wisdom that was hidden from the everyday mundane of my main work.

If you are not interested in math, the message I got from the tedious numbers is just to do more and fail more because success is the tail event of numerous failure.

But if you are interested, here you are.

On risky venture capital investment math, out of more than 21,000 venture financings from 2004 to 2014: 65% lost money. 0.5% becomes huge.

On boring, diversified index investment math, 40% of Russell 3000 stock components lost at least 70% of their value and never recovered from 1980. 7% of the component effectively drives the index 73-fold overall return.

So literally just do more and fail more – risky or safe or whatever. Don’t overthink, get it done and move onto the next one until we get to the tail end.

Besides, even if not reaching the tail end, the odds are on my side if I increase the base number of trials.

P.S. The book is The Psychology of Money.