To love decoration is to enjoy synthesis: in other words, it is to have hungry senses and unused powers of attention. This hunger, when it cannot well be fed by recollecting things past, relishes a profusion of things simultaneous. Nothing is so much respected by unintelligent people as elaboration and complexity. They are simply dazed and overawed at seeing at once so much more than they can master. To overwhelm the senses is, for them, the only way of filling the mind. It takes cultivation to appreciate in art, as in philosophy, the consummate value of what is simple and finite, because it has found its pure function and ultimate import in the world. What is just, what is delicately and silently adjusted to its special office, and thereby in truth to all ultimate issues, seems to the vulgar something obvious and poor.
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I was struck by this paragraph taken from "Reason in Art", and I was reminded by the advice that many give about investing...most recently seeing Gartman's rules which strike at this very simplicity and elegance. (See the Big Picture and/or John Mauldin). For folks using TA, the admonitions to use a few indicators to have a balanced view and to provide more than one tecinical confirmation. So we should cultivate ourselves as investors to appreciate in our investment plans...."the consummate value of what is simple and finite, because it has found its pure function and ultimate import in the world."
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Santayana on Investing
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3 comments:
Very few things are simple. Complexity is everywhere.
However, with a certain mastery some complex things can be brought back to a level of facility and ease that can be mistaken for simplicity.
I doubt there are many stock analysts who are simple in their knowledge and approach who are masters in their field.
Russell,
I think you make a terrific observation about mastery of the complex can be mistaken for simplicity. I think we're talking about the same thing--reducing to the essence and finding the underlying utility.
Accordingly, when I laud simplicity it is for the integration and distillation. In my work experience, that failure to distill and the propensity to get lost in the complexity have caused near fatal events for corporate health.
I'm not an advocate for simple in knowledge, but complex approaches without a correspondent facility for understanding fundamental contributors (teasing out the important stuff) is near worthless.
Decision rules often seem "simple" but, in fact, are important and can help us navigate sometimes difficult, challenging terrain.
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