Joseph L. Shaefer | Mar 19, 2015 05:35AM ET
When I was a young Army officer (well, a 2nd Lieutenant, anyway, which only other 2nd Lieutenants believe to be a “real” officer rank) I was assigned to a Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Group. PSYOP doesn’t exist in the Army today; political correctness has softened the harshness of Psy War (Golly, “harshness” as an element of warfare? Perish the thought). It’s now called Military Information Support Operations.
Whatever we call it, the job of the Psy Warrior is to either induce or reinforce behaviors favorable to United States' national objectives, assuming of course that the United States leadership actually has objectives (and can articulate them.) We trained with and deployed with other special operators so it was a challenging and exciting job, but I noticed that the Special Forces (Green Beret) teams seemed to have even more fun and adventure.
I was attached to these teams but not a real member of the team, so after a year in my first assignment I began training to become a Special Forces officer. In those days, there was the Army and there was Special Forces. That is to say, the common wisdom back then of Big Green (the conventional Army) lay in the fact that everything was hurry up and wait; that there was an SOP (standard operating procedure) for everything; that prior ways of doing things were proven and therefore to be duplicated whenever possible and “this is the way we do things around here;” and that the job of the Infantry was to fight and someone else would take care of getting the beans and bullets to us.
I learned very quickly what makes Special Forces different: all of these shibboleths were stood on their head. I think many of those lessons learned can stand us in good stead as investors, as well. Lessons like:
How does understanding these distinctions help us become better investors? Let me count the ways:
Allocation of your financial resources, and reallocation as appropriate, are constant logistical challenges we all face. In this case, you are the one on the financial battlefield. It is your money and your future that is at stake. I’m pretty certain, as nice a guy as he may be, if you followed Warren Buffett into Tesco (OTC:TSCDF), he won’t be sending you a check for the difference.
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Past performance is no guarantee of future results, rather an obvious statement but clearly too often unheeded judging by the number of investors who buy the current #1 mutual fund one year only to watch it plummet the following year.
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