In life generally and in many fields as well, hero worship is not really very useful. What I mean to say is if you are a cricket player you will have your favorites – Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Ricky Ponting, or if you are a little older you could have Barry Richards, Viv  Richards, G R Vishvanath, etc.

Do you notice anything in common?

Ok, you are not a cricket fan, what about Hindi movies? Right from Ashok Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Dev anand, Shammi Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Navin Nischal, Kamalhasan, Randhir Kapoor,

Do you notice anything in common?

Ok, you only know Investing?

Take a pick: John Templeton, Warren Buffett, George Soros, David Tepper, Peter Lynch, Carl Icahn, Paul Tudor Jones, James Grant, David Einhorn, Naren Sankaran, Prashant Jain, Vallabh Bhansali, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, B M Maheshwari,  and so on.

Here, breaking the suspense, none of these guys did any hero worship.

I have been with enough number of professional photographers…to know that the success of the photographer is while editing!! He shows you ONLY his best photos. This leads us to believe that he takes only good photographs. This is not true at all.

One very big money manager was bailed out by the fund shareholder. If that had not happened his career would have been over before it started. There are 2 very big names – partners – who had gone short on one of the top scrips in India, and they were being squeezed. The owner of the company (on which they had gone short) BAILED them out.

Last year another very big shareholder was in the doldrums for a very long period – the promoter refused to even meet the broker.

Most of these stories are spine chilling.

You can read the books written by them and see some of the strategies. I was JUST PLAIN LUCKY enough to buy ‘The Only 3 Questions that Count’ in late 2007 and went and sold many of the infra stocks that I had – LnT, Tata Power, and some Nbfc shares like Cholamandalam and Kotak Bank. In retrospect I feel that buying that book covered the cost of my whole library – past, present and future 🙂

Hero worship leads to copying, but reading leads to learning. Each one of us is different in our DNA, so we need to go and create our own style. Remember if you copy and make money  your bank account does not laugh at you (mine does not at least). Most of these guys have been irrational, emotional, have made wrong decisions – but their right decisions have been far more valuable than their wrong decisions.

So read about your heroes. Read about markets, see the time in which they functioned, and LEARN, but for heavens SAKE…DO not copy…

http://www.subramoney.com/2010/04/mba-project-cut-and-paste/