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| “The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.” - Benjamin Graham |
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| New Podcast Episode: "Investor Mindset" is our podcast series for hacking your brain to develop long-term investing skills.
We just dropped Episode 13, "Lifelong Love of Learning." Download it here.
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| Cryptocurrencies: Too Early or Too Late? (Wells Fargo): For years, the big financial institutions turned up their noses at crypto. Slowly, the tide is turning.
In this report from Wells Fargo, the financial juggernaut finally echoes what we've been saying all along: it's not too late to get into crypto -- in fact, it's like the early days of the Internet -- but it's also not too early.
Investor takeaway: Another way of saying the Wells Fargo message is that the time is just right for investing in crypto. If it's not too early, and not too late, then it doesn't take Goldilocks to figure out what they're really saying: the time is just right. |
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The Wells Fargo report argues that crypto is a world-changing technology that everyone will eventually use, similar to electricity, the cellphone, or other technologies that see an "S-curve" of adoption: |
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| Courtesy Wells Fargo Goldilocks report
Investor takeaway: Measuring percentage adoption by the general population is an excellent way to measure where we are in the crypto journey. For long-term investors, our growth is just getting started: |
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| My phone rang yesterday, and I made the mistake of picking it up.
“Hello, this is Chris from Merrill Lynch Private Wealth Management. Do you have a few minutes?”
“Not really,” I responded. “I’m editing our crypto investor newsletter. Hey, do you know anything about bitcoin and crypto?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
“Well, we are a regulated financial institution, so legally we can’t invest in bitcoin.”
“Right,” I said, “but you can learn about it…”
He abruptly hung up on me.
CHRIS FROM MERRILL LYNCH PRIVATE WEALTH MANAGEMENT HUNG UP ON ME.
My goal today is not to shame Chris from Merrill Lynch Private Wealth Management. I mean, how many people named Chris are working at Merrill Lynch Private Wealth Management? I’m guessing at least three.
But still: long odds that someone at Merrill Lynch Private Wealth Management would take the time to find the 1-in-3 person named Chris who was assigned to the Boston region, and has my name in their contact database.
And there is zero chance I would sign up for Merrill Lynch Private Wealth Management anyway, especially from a sales rep who hangs up on me when I mention bitcoin.
This is because I embrace the love of learning. |
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Love of Learning
Maria Montessori was a remarkable woman.
Born in 1870, she was intent on breaking into the male-dominated professions of her day. At the age of 13, she enrolled in an all-boys technical school. Gifted in science and math, she defied her critics, aced her schoolwork, and graduated with honors.
Then she set her sights on something even more unusual: medical school.
Italian medical schools were dominated by males, many of whom entered for the prestige of the degree and did not take their studies seriously. Montessori, however, did. She made it a point to out-study and out-learn her male classmates, to show them that women were capable – that she was capable -- of becoming a doctor.
Still, med school was tough, especially at the University of Rome. One day, cleaning up after an autopsy, she was suddenly overcome by a wave of horror and nausea: the bones she was holding once belonged to a human being.
She began to have a panic attack. The narrow room closed in, and she found herself sickened and gasping for air. In a cupboard on the wall she saw specimens of human skulls, one labeled MURDERER. Another labeled THIEF. Next to each skull was the brain belonging to the murderer and the thief.
Overcome with dread, Montessori tried desperately to distract herself. She began thinking of these brains, and how difficult they were to comprehend. “An invincible force urged me to think of my own brain,” she later wrote, “which was made in the same way.”
What made one person’s brain a murderer, and one an aspiring doctor? What a difficult study, she told herself, over and over again, breathing herself back to calm.
This “difficult study” – the mystery of the human brain and how it learns – is the study to which she ultimately devoted her life. She graduated the university with a doctor in medicine, proving her critics wrong and paving the way for generations of female Italian doctors.
She then turned her attention to young children: more specifically, how they learn. |
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| Inside a Montessori classroom today. She believed in beautiful, high-quality materials that children could see and touch.
Montessori, herself, was a learning machine. She read all the major educational theories of the past several hundred years, organizing them into a systematic and logical way, and adding her own observations and data.
How do children learn? This was the burning question behind Montessori’s work. And how can children learn better?
Slowly she began to develop her own educational approach (the technical term is “pedagogy”), publishing peer-reviewed papers and trying out her methods with children. To her delight, children trained in the “Montessori” method were proven to be more attentive, more motivated, and more self-disciplined than those without.
Today, there are approximately 20,000 Montessori schools throughout the world. Former students include innovative thinkers like psychologist Erik Erikson, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. "You can’t understand Google," said Marissa Meyer, "unless you know [its founders] were Montessori kids. This is baked into Larry and Sergey approach problems." "It's the way their brains were programmed early on."
Amazon? Google! In a way, you could say that Maria Montessori's model of learning took over the world. |
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| This video will lock in the Montessori method for you.
At the core of the Montessori approach is a simple philosophy: human beings are programmed to learn.
Naturally, right out of the womb, we love to learn. We all learned to walk, talk, read, and write. But our educational systems can rob us of this natural love of learning by forcing rote memorization and mindless busywork.
The Montessori approach, in contrast, involves harnessing the child’s natural love of learning: to encourage them to go deep on the subjects that interest them, to develop “lifelong learners.”
To me, this is one of the fundamental skills we need to thrive in the 21st century. In the past, you learned a trade, and you could ride one career for the rest of your life.
Those days are over.
Today, things move so quickly – especially in professional fields – that most of us will have many careers, and possibly even “mini careers.” We have to constantly be hoovering up what’s new, or the next batch of fresh-faced college students will quickly outpace us. But they, too, must be lifelong learners, or their knowledge will quickly become outdated.
Lifelong learning is our only path forward. (Great quote here.)
Nowhere is this more true than in the world of bitcoin and cryptocurrency. If you're getting into this space, you better develop a love of learning.
For five years, I’ve been trying to get bankers and financial advisers to learn more about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. I am constantly amazed by how few of them want to learn. Chris at Merrill Lynch Private Wealth Management hung up on me as soon as I mentioned learning.
I'm a professional learner: my job requires sucking in a lot of information and sifting through it very quickly. Here are a few pro tips on learning, especially in the fast-paced world of crypto investing. |
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The Daily Habits of Learning for Investors Do: subscribe to 1 or 2 high-quality newsletters (like this one). There's a lot of noise, which is why we start each newsletter with just one high-quality news story that matters, so you can ignore all the hype and speculation. (I can also recommend Coin Metrics and The Pomp Letter.) Do: speed read books. Books are still the best way to go deep on a topic, but most people lose interest after the first three chapters. Most of a writer’s main points are in the first three chapters, so that will still give you the gist, and you can read an online summary for the rest. Alternately, buy the audiobook and listen to it while driving. Do: listen to quality webinars or workshops. Here we are talking about thoughtful, planned content -- not off-the-cuff interviews. You can watch them while exercising, or (if there are no visuals) while driving or doing chores. Don’t: listen to podcasts. Most podcasts are a waste of time, because they are rarely planned out. As someone who's appeared on dozens of podcasts, trust me that the hosts frequently don’t even do basic research. You end up with an improvised conversation with low nutritional value. Don’t: watch YouTube. The algorithms of YouTube reward people who have mastered the art of YouTube, which means flashy intro cards, hype-fueled talk, and the right crypto buzzwords. YouTube is the junk food of crypto. Don’t: read Crypto Twitter. It’s a terrible medium for communication. It discourages thoughtful dialogue and debate. It rewards sound bites instead of good ideas. And it’s wildly addictive. Twitter is the crack cocaine of crypto. (Of course, podcasts, YouTube videos, or even TV are fine for entertainment -- just don't use them to learn.)
A Sample Daily Learning Schedule
Developing a daily habit of learning is the best pro tip I can give you. Here’s a recommended schedule: - Subscribe to 1-2 good-quality newsletters. Scan these for anything interesting, and read any articles that seem worth your time. (I do this over lunch.)
- Exercise several times a week, and use this time to listen to webinars, workshops, or audiobooks. (When using the stationary bike at the gym, I find I can also read.)
- Eliminate social media, YouTube, TV, and podcasts (except for entertainment).
Developing a Love of Learning I’m glad Chris from Merrill Lynch Private Wealth Management hung up on me, because he showed his true colors right away. If they’re not going to learn on a single phone call, you can bet they're not going to learn once they have our money. Do your own money management. Become a lifelong learner. Find your Montessori passion, and deep dive down that rabbit hole. Our new Investor Mindset podcast series is available for paid subscribers, to help you develop the qualities of mind needed for successful crypto investing. (Think guided meditations for investors.) Episode 13 focuses on helping you develop Love of Learning. Download it here. |
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| Health, wealth, and happiness, John Hargrave Publisher |
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This is great news! it's good to see this sign that more institutions are getting involved in the space. |
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They can't wear the headphones forever. |
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| Bitcoin Market Journal is a daily newsletter that makes you a better crypto investor. It is created by Evamarie Augustine, Charles Bovaird, Mati Greenspan, John Hargrave, and Alexandre Lores.
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