📖Jeremy Grantham

Learn from Past Sells

🌿 Intermediate★★★★☆

Post-mortem every sell decision to improve.

💬

After every sell, review the outcome. Did you sell too early, too late, or at the right time? Post-mortems on sell decisions improve future judgment.

— GMO Quarterly Letters,2017

🏠 Everyday Analogy

Market cycles resemble seasons: planting, growth, harvest, and winter. Using one strategy in every season leads to repeated mistakes.

📖 Core Interpretation

Jeremy Grantham sees markets as cyclical rather than linear. Understanding cycle position improves risk-taking decisions more than trying to call exact tops and bottoms.
💎 Key Insight:Reviewing sell decisions sharpens future timing.

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❓ Why It Matters

Ignoring cycles repeats the same mistakes: excessive optimism at peaks and excessive pessimism near troughs. Context matters for position sizing.

🎯 How to Practice

Monitor credit, valuation, earnings, and sentiment signals; reduce aggressiveness in euphoric phases and preserve flexibility in fearful phases.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

Treating short rebounds as full cycle turns
Extrapolating peak conditions indefinitely
Becoming maximally defensive near valuation troughs

📚 Case Studies

1
Brazil and Russia Commodity Slump (2015)
During the commodity price collapse, emerging markets, especially Brazil and Russia, traded at steep discounts. Grantham highlighted mean reversion and demographic tailwinds supporting long‑term value in these markets.
✨ Outcome:Near‑term underperformance was followed by solid rebounds as commodities and risk appetite recovered over subsequent years.
2
Oil and Commodity Spike (2008)
Global demand, limited supply, and speculation drove oil above $140 and broad commodities sharply higher, echoing Grantham’s warnings on finite resources.
✨ Outcome:Investors in energy and resources benefited near‑term; subsequent crash hurt late entrants but reinforced long‑run scarcity thesis.

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