The genius of C. Raymond Hunt was that he crafted his boats despite his lack of schooling, giving him the freedom to go against the crowd schooled in the “norms” of higher education (which turned out to be a blessing and a curse later in life). He didn’t graduate from high school.
It was said that having made the varsity hockey team as a freshman at Andover, it got to his head, and his grades suffered. He was put on probation and transferred to another school, where he did not finish. How then did he understand how to build a boat?
In his book Boat Crazy, Stan Grayson writes:
As a youth, Hunt was an unmotivated student, but when a subject fascinated him he read whatever he could about it. Over time, he gathered together a small number of reference books that he used time and again. One was his daughter Yan’s high-school physic book. Another was a collection of boat designs, including three of his own, called Your New Boat (Simon and Schuster, 1946). But the most important of the books he kept close by was Lindsay Lord’s Naval Architecture of Planing Hulls, first published in 1946.
Just yesterday, two things happened to Your Survival Guy. The first was I read an article in Barron’s about one of the founders of Long-Term Capital Management (covered in the book When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein) who now runs an investment advisory business.
You may recall that LTCM went bankrupt in spectacular fashion as the smartest people in the room turned out to be wrong and required a bailout. The founder commented on how Wall Street, with all its financial engineering, does a terrible job teaching employees how to manage their own money. In other words, there is not much teaching about personal finance. Is that who you want running your money?
The second thing that happened to Your Survival Guy was that I picked up my copy of the investment classic The Intelligent Investor. I can turn to any page and see my notes in the margins and sentences underlined in red ink. One such page on portfolio allocation discusses the importance of how you invest, not what you invest in. The allocation of your portfolio is often overlooked by the stock pickers seeking the next winner.
Action Line: No matter one’s trade, do not think that going with the masses leads to success. It may. It may not. Instead, do what you’re good at, know thyself, and find someone who shares your beliefs. When you’re ready to talk, let’s talk. Email me at ejsmtih@yoursurvivalguy.com.
