Axiom 1: Take risk. Otherwise there are no returns.

- Not worried = not risking enough worry is an integral part of lifes grandest enjoyments.
- Life ought to be an adventure, not a vegetation. Thats achieved by taking risk.
- Unless I have a wealthy relative, the only way I am ever going to get rich is by taking a risk.
- What difference is it going to make if I get a bit poorer trying to get richer?
- Always play for meaningful stakes.
o Not a significant loss, wont be a significant gain.
- Resist the allure of diversification.
o diversification is contrary to the notion one should always play for meaningful stakes,
o by diversifying, gains and losses are likely to cancel each other out
o by diversifying too many investments are involved to closely track, therefore it is difficult to
assess the risks and rewards of each.
In summary the first axiom says to put your money at risk. Don't be afraid of getting hurt, especially if you
are younger and have time to recover from cyclical downturns. The degree of risk embraced should not be
hair-raising. On the other hand the risk incurred must reflect a meaningful investment.

Axiom 2: Always take your profit too soon.

The successful investor recognizes their gains early rather than waiting too long to sell. Markets are cyclical
whether dealing in real estate, gold, grains, or stocks, and gains can quickly reverse. An investor should
sell and recognize a profit when the investment reaches the expected goal.

The issue of when to sell to recognize a gain is a very difficult one even for expert investors. An investor
should set a goal for returns at the start of the venture. When that return is realized in investor should sell.
In rare instances the situation may change. Facts may indicate that further upside is possible; in that case
an investor may want to re-examine and only sell a portion of the investment.

Axiom 3: When problems arise sell quickly.

This strategy will assist an investor in preserving capital. Selling quickly when difficulties arise is difficult to
implement because of the fear of regret, investment loss, and the admission that one has mis-analyzed the
opportunity. Good investors expect accept small losses as part of the investment business. Large gains
should over time exceed the small losses that are recognized.

Axiom 4: Human behavior, and market behavior, cannot be

predicted. Distrust anyone who claims to know the future.
An investor should not build an investment program based on expert forecasts. Disregard those
prognostications. Nobody knows what the future holds, therefore it cannot be predicted. Make your own
decisions based on the applicable facts.

Axiom 5: Chaos cannot be made orderly by the use of

formulae and charts
Because history rarely predicts the future, historical data and trends should be considered suspect when
analyzing risk. Complex mathematical formulas of financial behavior have failed numerous times even for
very sophisticated investors. An investor should not try to see order where order and predictability does not
exist. The focus should be finding a promising investment where the odds are tilted heavily in the
investors favor.
Axiom 6: Preserve your mobility and investment options.
An investor should not maintain their investment position due to loyalty to a company or individual. Losses
should be cut short regardless. If a better investment comes along an investor should sell and move on.
Once losses begin they tend to continue, therefore investor should recognize losses quickly and reinvest
the proceeds.

Axiom 7: Hunches can be trusted if they can be explained.

Axiom 8: Religion & superstition have no role in investing.

Axiom 9: Beware of excess optimism

You should never make an investment because you are merely optimistic about the future. Investors should
be confident with regard to their judgment, and the facts on which their analysis is based.

Axiom 10: Disregard the majority opinion, it's probably wrong

An investment thesis supported by facts and reasoning is preferable blindly investing with the majority.

Axiom 11: If it doesn't pay off the first time forget it

If an investor makes a bad decision they should cut their losses quickly and move on. Very rarely is it a
wise decision to revisit the idea at a future date. The investor should never try to save a bad investment by
averaging down as a stock price declines.

Axiom 12: Don't become entrenched to an inflexible long-

range investment plan.
Business and economic conditions change constantly. A party should have the flexibility to sell or to add to
a position and should not be locked into an inflexible position. Invest money in ventures that are attractive
as they present themselves, and sell or withdraw money from investments as hazards present themselves
or investment goals are realized.

1. Run a concentrated portfolio

2. Keep the odds are in your favor

3. Cut your losses short

4. Let winners run, but sell when they reach fair market value

5. Do your own analysis

6. Beware of excess optimism or pessimism and of expert options

7. Remain flexible and adapt to the investment environment

The best investors (and gamblers) focus on good process as

much or more than on the good outcome.
accurate feedback is essential is it a function of luck or skill?

When a large positive outcome has a high probability of occurring the Kelly
formula provides the investor bets (invests) heavily. When the odds are not heavily tilted
in the investors favor the individual should scale back the size of the investment, or not invest at all.

This will generate a higher degree of volatility than normal. THATS OK.

Scott Adams' Secret of Success: Failure What's the best way to climb to the top? Be a failure

SCOTT ADAMS

Dont follow your passion, BE PASSIONATE ABOUT WHATEVER YOU DO! When your hard
work yields success, your passion will increase. Success caused passion more than passion
caused success. So forget about passion.

- the best loan customer is someone who has no passion whatsoever, just a desire to work
hard at something that looks good on a spreadsheet. You want the grinder, not the guy who
loves his job. For most people, it's easy to be passionate about things that are working out,
and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion.

FORGET ABOUT GOALS. JOB SEEKING IS A CONTINUAL PROCESS. In all things,

look not to now but to the future to figure out why you are doing what youre doing and how
you need to do it to help you do what you are striving for. i.e How is this job or class or endeavor
helping me?

Chances are that the best job for you won't become available at precisely the time you declare
yourself ready.

Your best bet, he explained, was to always be looking for a

better deal. The better deal has its own schedule. I believe the way he explained it is that

your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job.This was my
first exposure to the idea that one should have a system instead of a goal. The system was to
continually look for better options.

GOALS ARE FOR LOSERS. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure
that they hope will be temporary. If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but
only until you realize that you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your
options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore
you, or to set new goals and re-enter the cycle of permanent pre-success failure.

Identify my skill set and choose a system that vastly increases my odds of
getting "lucky." Aka the salesman. In fact, his system is so solid that it could withstand quite
a bit of bad luck without buckling. How much passion does this fellow have for his chosen field?
Answer: zero. What he has is a spectacular system, and that beats passion every time.

As for my own system, when I graduated from college, I outlined my entrepreneurial plan. The
idea was to create something that had value andthis next part is the keyI wanted the
product to be something that was easy to reproduce in unlimited quantities. I wanted to
create, invent, write, or otherwise concoct something widely desired that would be easy to
reproduce.

My system of creating something the public wants and reproducing it in large quantities nearly
guaranteed a string of failures. By design, all of my efforts were long shots. Had I been goal-
oriented instead of system-oriented, I imagine I would have given up after the first several
failures. It would have felt like banging my head against a brick wall. But being systems-oriented ,
I felt myself growing more capable every day, no matter the fate of the
project that I happened to be working on. And every day during those years I woke
up with the same thought, literally, as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and slapped the alarm
clock off. Today's the day. If you drill down on any success story, you always discover that luck
was a huge part of it.
You can't control luck, but you can move from a
game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it
easier for luck to find you.

The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game. If your
current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and try
something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens.
The universe has plenty of luck to go around; you just need to keep your hand raised until it's
your turn.

Failure is a resource that can be managed. I also want to become smarter, more talented, better
networked, healthier and more energized

Success is entirely accessible, even if you happen to be a huge screw-up 95% of the time.

Good ideas have no value because the world already has too many of them. The market
rewards execution, not ideas. From that point on, I concentrated on ideas that I could execute. I
was already failing toward success, but I didn't yet know it. Doers get rewarded! Dreamers are,
well, dreamers until they actually do something.

People matter and it is important who knows you not just who you know. Work to
establish relationships with interesting people so that they know
who you are.
there is no such thing as useful information that comes from a company's management. Now I
diversify and let the lying get smoothed out by all the other variables in my investments
 I'm delighted to admit that I've failed at more challenges than anyone I know. As for you, I'd like
to think that reading this will set you on the path of your own magnificent screw-ups and
cavernous disappointments. You're welcome! And if I forgot to mention it earlier, that's exactly
where you want to be: steeped to your eyebrows in failure.It's a good place to be because failure
is where success likes to hide in plain sight. Everything you want out of life is in that huge,
bubbling vat of failure. The trick is to get the good stuff out.

Leading with VUCA prime

Thus, the search is on for any new leadership anchors to grab onto. So far, those anchors have
turned out to be captured in the antidotes to VUCA whats being called VUCA prime. In this
leadership paradigm, volatility is mitigated by vision, a clear cut master statement of where an
organization is headed. When confronted by volatility, leaders need to communicate clearly and make
sure their intent is understood.

Uncertainty yields to understanding, the deliberate ability to stop, look, and listen. In uncertain
situations, leaders need to make sure they get fresh perspectives and remain flexible with regard to
solutions.

Complexity is checkmated by clarity, the deliberate effort to make sense of the chaos. In complex
situations, leaders need to make sure to collaborate with others and stop seeking permanent
solutions. To paraphrase an old adage, dont let perfect become the enemy of good enough.

And ambiguity is matched by agility, the ability of a leader to communicate across people and
organizations instantly and to move quickly in applying solutions. When confronted by ambiguity,
leaders need to listen well, think divergently, and set up incremental dividends. This is captured in the
concept of wirearchy, as opposed to hierarchy where social networks that allow you to engage
the insights of many trump the brilliance of any one person.

As the world has become more complex and turbulent, research in human potential and neuroscience
at the same time is increasingly revealing practical ways for leaders to develop the mindset and
capabilities to lead in it. This research shows that the keys to leading in a VUCA world include
possessing the knowledge, mindfulness, and ability to:

1. Create a vision and make sense of the world. Sense-making is perhaps more important now than
at any time in modern history for many companies, as we are not too many years away from the time
when the global economy will actually be truly global, encompassing every country and in which
competitors will be emanating from everywhere.
2. Understand ones own and others values and intentions. This speaks to having a core ability to
know what you want to be and where you want to go at all times, even while being open to multiple
ways to get there.

3. Seek clarity regarding yourself and seek sustainable relationships and solutions. Leading in
turbulence demands the ability to utilize all facets of the human mind. Even the most impressive
cognitive minds will fall short in the VUCA world it will take equal parts cognitive, social, emotional,
spiritual, and physical intelligence to prevail.

4. Practice agility, adaptability and buoyancy. This means the responsive and resilient ability to
balance adroitly and right yourself to ride out those turbulent forces that cannot be avoided, and to
pivot quickly to seize advantage of those that can be harnessed.

5. Develop and engage social networks. The ability to recognize that the days of the single great
leader are gone. In the VUCA world, the best leaders are the ones who harness leadership from
everyone.

Learn more

Passmore, OShea, and Horney, Leadership Agility: A Business Imperative for a VUCA

World, People and Strategy, Volume 33, Issue 4-2010

Kail, Leading in a VUCA Environment, HBR Blog Network, November 3, 2010 through

January 6, 2011.

Understanding the VUCA World with Bob Johansen and David Small,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJqCPFzq6kU