Look among your classmates/colleagues and ask yourself “If I
could purchase 10% of anyone’s income, who would I choose?…..If I could short
10% of someone’s income, who would it be?”
Ben Graham used
this exercise quite extensively.
Ask yourself the
basis for your selection and write down on a piece of paper the qualities and defaults for
each of these individuals. Then try to change your own behavior by imitating the qualities and removing the defaults.
Understand that these are not God given
qualities…they are based on determination and habit “Chains of habit are too
light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken”. You don’t want to wait
until you’re 50 or 60.
Ask yourself,
would you be uncomfortable with your decisions being written on the front page
of the newspaper by an unfriendly but intelligent reporter.
