November 15, 2007
There is a Great Deal of Human Nature in People
Jim Grant wrote about David Winters in his latest column, which led me to read the Wintergreen Annual and Semi-Annual Reports, which led me to ask: would you give your money to someone who signs his name like this?
Cat: | Time: 10:12 am (utc+8)
November 15th, 2007 at 10:16 am
What’s your point?
November 15th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Lee: I’m trying (and failing obviously) to make a joke about childish signatures. The top one he developed in high school after abandoning the elementary school cursive (on the bottom) that everyone of our generation recognizes so well.
November 15th, 2007 at 10:27 am
If you smoke you might like Winters a lot. He has 19% of assets in tobacco stocks, quite nicely internationally diversified.
Winters was a Michael Price student at Heine and Mutual Series, so he should know how to make twice as much as the average fund guy. He does appear to be piggybacking Third Avenue Funds and Fairholm stock choices. So far so good, but the jury’s still out.
November 15th, 2007 at 10:34 am
I bet you a rapidly depreciating $5 that there’s a correlation between bad handwriting and being a good investor. Someone do a study.
November 15th, 2007 at 11:02 am
The answer is an unqualified “yes”.
November 15th, 2007 at 11:08 am
@Bhh: Maybe… the point I’m trying to make is that the value of good handwriting wasn’t pushed hard on Generation Xers like Winters and me … the Baby Boom generation destroyed all that … I know that in my father’s generation (Buffett’s generation), good handwriting was strongly encouraged.
@Cnris: I agree. ;-) Winters’s record is outstanding.
November 15th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Tom: I only smoke when someone offers me one and I noticed in one of the letters that Winters urged all his shareholders not to smoke. ;-)
November 17th, 2007 at 3:39 am
Maybe you can do a correlation study between beautiful signatures and fund performances. The difficult part is how to quantify beautiful signatures. From my personal experience throughout the school, students with the fine writing seemed to be more lagging in school than the others. But maybe because I have a bias of thinking that fine writing is somehow prereq to better performance.
November 17th, 2007 at 8:57 am
ryan: Yes, some academic (preferably supported by a government grant) should do such a study. All the really smart people I know have completely illegible handwriting, but as I said before, it’s mainly a generational thing. I can see that David Winters is around my age and is quite careful and conscientious but maybe a bit naive… that’s as far as my amateur handwriting takes me.