Being flexible is incredibly important. You can change your mind. I understand not wanting to flit around, jumping at something little, but you also need to ask yourself if the reasons you're in an investment are still the reasons you should be. It's hard for your ego and it's hard to call clients, but you have to do it.
John ManleyI always think of the economy as going down a pretty broad road that has mud on either side - for inflation and deflation. What hurts the market is when we unexpectedly swerve into one of those mud banks.
John ManleyBe flexible. Don't be afraid to change your mind. If you're wrong, change your mind. If you go down the wrong path, and you're down 10-12%, it's better to sell down 15% versus 50%. If you have an idea that something is going to happen, you're predicting the future, and it's OK to be wrong. Where you can go wrong is by making a prediction that doesn't come true, and then sticking with it.
John ManleyWhat caused 2008, in my opinion, is that people just didn't see the risk. These people that took on all this risk didn't think they had it - they thought they hedged it all away. As long as there's a perception of risk, and a culture of looking for risk, it's going to be hard to deflate us.
John ManleyThere's an old line that goes, the truck you see 400 yards down the road is not the truck that hits you. When we see these problems coming, they usually get defused. Brexit may have been a surprise, but we recognized it as something that could possibly happen.
John ManleyI think people are complacent. But complacency is like any other metric. It's easy to measure where it is, but it's hard to tell how persistent it is. What causes really big bear markets is not just when people are overly complacent - it's when that complacency is sticky. As long as the skepticism can refresh itself, I think that the markets are still quite viable.
John ManleyBeing flexible is incredibly important. You can change your mind. I understand not wanting to flit around, jumping at something little, but you also need to ask yourself if the reasons you're in an investment are still the reasons you should be. It's hard for your ego and it's hard to call clients, but you have to do it.
John Manley