Adam Butler – You Can Be Right for a Long Time and Still Be Wrong

Adam Butler is Chief Investment Officer of ReSolve Asset Management. Adam is an author of the book Adaptive Asset Allocation: Dynamic Global Portfolios to Profit in Good Times and Bad and contributed to the best investment writing volumes one and two, and he is ranked in the top one percent of authors by papers downloaded on SSRN. Adam also holds a CFA and CAIA charters. In this episode, we will hear Adam's ironic realization he got from his worst investment experience - that you can be right for a very long time before you are wrong. His jarring investment experience affected his confidence and made him doubt his expertise and the value that he could do for his clients. Learn how he regained his confidence and bounced back into the investment game armed with the takeaways he got from this worst investment ever.    “The absolute number one fundamental takeaway I would like to share is that diversification is the best protection against  ignorance.” -Adam Butler     What do you want to hear from the My Worst Investment Ever Podcast? Tell us here! Resources:  My Worst Investment Ever Book myworstinvestmentever.com Adaptive Asset Allocation: Dynamic Global Portfolios to Profit in Good Times and Bad by Adam Butler The Folly of Forecasting: Ignore all Economists, Strategists, & Analysts by James Montier Topics Covered: 00:29 – Andrew telling us all about Adam Butler's career background and what he does at the moment 03:07 – Adam sharing  the whole story of his worst investment ever 07:06 – How that failed investment kept him rudderless for months and why he still held on for the longterm reason 08:10 – Lessons learned from his failed investment and narration of Dr. Tetlock's work on the accuracy of forecasts 11:18 – Andrew sharing his own story of a study he made himself about forecast accuracy 12:36 – Adam discussing the books of James Montier about behavioral investing and the folly of forecasting and expounding more on Dr. Philip Tetlock's studies about forecasts 19:17 – Adam on what his views are on researching thoroughly about a particular subject about what happened to his failed investments 22:02 – The concept of diversification 24:14 – The idea of randomness and the awareness of randomness Main Takeaways: Lesson 1: "One of the most disruptive and ironic things about investing is that you can be right for a very, very long time before you are catastrophically wrong.” – Adam Butler Lesson 2: "It was a shocking and jarring experience,