📖Joel Greenblatt

Behavioral Bias Awareness

🌿 Intermediate★★★★☆

Know your behavioral biases to avoid them.

💬

Know the common behavioral biases that trap investors: anchoring, confirmation bias, loss aversion, and herding. Awareness is the first step to prevention.

— The Little Book That Beats the Market,2005

🏠 Everyday Analogy

Risk control is like a seatbelt. It does not make the ride faster, but it keeps you alive when conditions suddenly turn against you.

📖 Core Interpretation

Joel Greenblatt treats survival as the first objective. Limiting permanent capital loss, controlling leverage, and avoiding single-point failure are prerequisites for long-term compounding.
💎 Key Insight:Awareness of biases is the first defense against them.

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❓ Why It Matters

A single large drawdown can erase years of progress. Risk control is not timidity; it is the operating system that keeps compounding alive.

🎯 How to Practice

Define downside scenarios before entry, cap position size, avoid fragile leverage, and maintain liquidity so mistakes remain survivable.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

Equating volatility with all forms of risk
Oversized positions without an exit plan
Using leverage to compensate for uncertainty

📚 Case Studies

1
Spin-off: Liberty Media from AT&T (2000)
AT&T spun off Liberty Media, which appeared complex and overlooked. Greenblatt analyzed underlying assets and saw a large discount to intrinsic value.
✨ Outcome:Held through volatility; as the market recognized underlying media asset value, returns were multiples of initial investment over several years.
2
American Express Post-Asia/Russian Crises (2001)
American Express traded at depressed multiples after emerging market and Russian crises hurt travel and card volumes.
✨ Outcome:Greenblatt’s long-term view on brand strength and card economics led to holding; as conditions normalized, valuation rerated and produced strong multi-year gains.

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