market folly

Entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban recently sat down for an interview with the Young Investors Society.  In it, they talked about a wide range of topics focused on business: entrepreneurship, investing, risk, and more.  Here's some highlights:


- "I avoid risk by trying to know more about what I'm trying to do than anybody."

- Talked about advocating the Peter Lynch method of investing by focusing on what you know.  He was always using tech hardware and knew which companies' products worked and which didn't.  Parlayed that into a hedge fund based on his research/picks and then sold that.  Noted there's less companies going public these days so "there's more money chasing fewer choices."

- On what he thinks is going to be different in 5-10 years: "Artificial intelligence is gonna eat the world."

- Owns a lot of Amazon.com (AMZN) stock.  Mainly because they're involved in a lot of the areas he was discussing (A.I. etc)

- Also a previous article said he owns a lot of Netflix (NFLX).  In the interview, Cuban talked about how their content aggregation and focus on data allowed them to be able to recommend content to users.  (And then they obviously took that a step further by seeing what was being watched the most and then created their own content based on those metrics.)

- Big time screw ups in investing: he liked the Uber idea but didn't like how they were pricing it.  "Sometimes you make it and sometimes you miss 'em."

- "There's a hundred apps that let you sell your time."  Thinks there's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur.

- On being an analyst:  "Everyone has the same information so it's hard to package it uniquely.  Find the companies where you may have an edge.  Using your unique perspective is what I did when I started investing in stocks."  He talked about how a high school kid's viewpoint on companies like Snapchat or Twitter would be vastly different than someone who's in their 40's or 50's.

- On advice for young investors:  "Understand the hierarchy of return on investment.  Investing in stocks is not the first place you should invest.  Number one is pay off your debt.  Two: save some money.  Life doesn't match up to your returns.  You might have the best investment in the world but find yourself having to sell it to pay for school or to fix your car.  Always have some savings first."

Embedded below is the video of Mark Cuban's interview with Young Investors Society:



h/t A Wealth of Common Sense for the find