Mark Spitznagel > Quotes

“The key is to free oneself from a tyranny of first consequences, overvaluing what comes first at the expense of what inevitably comes later. As Bastiat warned, “The sweeter the fruit of habit is, the more bitter are the consequences.”16”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“Things that are good but don't look good must have some edge.”
― Mark Spitznagel, Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms

“All that wisdom—indeed, the summation of every word on these pages—is contained in a deceptively mundane object that weighs but a few ounces and through which, in the words of William Blake, you “hold infinity in the palm of your hand”: a humble pinecone. Worth nothing, neither rare nor unusual, it is like the Dao itself, failing to catch the eye or interest; to most, its meaning remains unseen. Yet to those who know what they are beholding, it is nothing less than a marvel. In the pinecone is a visible reminder of a practical discipline, the tenacious, unyielding pursuit of intermediate means as strategic advantage for achieving the ultimate ends—a quest only possible for those who dare to take the roundabout route.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“The shi of Sun Wu was to “make the most of the strategic advantage” and “if there is no advantage, do not move into action.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“Thus, the stock market tends to be about immediate bets (or expectations) on distant outcomes—yet all that matters to the bettors tends to be the immediate outcomes.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“The real black swan problem of stock market busts is not about a remote event that is considered unforeseeable; it is rather about a foreseeable event that is considered remote—”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“Mechanical equations can be used to solve practical problems through the introduction of empirically acquired constants and data; but equations of mathematical catallactics cannot in the same way be of service to practical problems in the area of human action where constant relations do not exist.”22”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“To be clear, it is the abnegation of interest rates as an information and control parameter in the economy that creates the distortion, not just inflation per se.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“we are decidedly inconsistent in our time preferences—that is, our preference for delay reverses as the delay period changes; and we are certainly not well-described by a single (or perhaps by any) static parameter.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“In nature’s demonstration of tuishou (or “push hands”), conifers pose no resistance to the angiosperms in the obvious, fertile places, yielding to the rout that sends them up into the craggy, isolated places. But when the angiosperms extend too far and produce dense overgrowth that leads to wildfires, the conifer follows them back, dumping their seeds on the newly vacated ground.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“The key is to free oneself from a tyranny of first consequences, overvaluing what comes first at the expense of what inevitably comes later. As Bastiat warned, “The sweeter the fruit of habit is, the more bitter are the consequences.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“Anyone can see the pinecones in the tree. None can see the trees, none can foresee the forest in the pinecone.”)”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“To win a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence; the highest excellence is to subdue the enemy’s army without fighting at all.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy.”33”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“Consumers and producers, with their subjective expectations and preferences, do not conform well to mathematical models.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“They do not become more roundabout, because they refrain from investing in capital that will not show returns for a period of time (or a period when the interest rate has not been lowered as much as shorter-term rates). Thus there is a hyperfocus on—and even addiction to—the yields of stocks and other risky and high-duration securities (a “maturity-mismatch”); there is an irrepressible allure to the steep yield curve.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“The Land of the Nibelungen, just like the real world under such intervention, is a frightfully distorted place. It is physically impossible to devote more land to timber production because all the pastureland currently in use appears to be quite profitable and, indeed, deserving of expansion, as well.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“to be shi until strategic advantage coalesces into the opportunistic action of li within shi”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“Interestingly, this increased temporal myopia under artificially lowered rates is the very opposite effect of naturally (savings-driven) lower rates. Genuine, savings-driven declines in the interest rate lead to capital accumulation, more roundabout production, and a progressing economy; artificially lower rates, driven by credit inflation, ultimately lead to naught but capital consumption and a regressing economy.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“Vom Kriege (On War) by the Prussian major general, Carl von Clausewitz.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“This ability to look beyond the obvious of the immediate seen and to foresee its later outcomes was, in Bastiat’s view, the true differentiator. “Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a present small evil.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“Smaller, naturally occurring fires, however, are nature’s way of turning back the clock as resources are released and flow from trees that are not thriving to those that perhaps can.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“We have thus succumbed to a blind faith in bureaucratic authority over natural processes.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“As the great tuishou practitioner Zheng Manqing observed, one must first “learn to invest in loss” by leading “an opponent’s force away so that it is useless,” and which will “polarize into its opposite and be transformed into the greatest profit.”23 In taijiquan is the essence of The Dao of Capital.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“How could it be that “guys who know where the market is heading are no longer at the Board of Trade. They are either retired or broke. And I can’t think of any that are retired.” Classic Klipp.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“Unfortunately, politicians hold the conviction that money growth gives us economic growth. They are blind to the fact that government cannot create anything. Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer.”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“Wir sind jetzt alle Österreicher”
― Mark Spitznagel, The DAO of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“Becoming conventional is self-defeating in this business. It’s the kiss of death. We take the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
― Mark Spitznagel, Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms

“What we have here is a clear, systematic source of investment mispricing, ripe for intertemporal arbitrage (a term synonymous with Austrian Investing itself).”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World

“shi actually requires li in the opposition in order to be effective; it is the hungriness and immediacy of the latter that provides the edge to the former”
― Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World