May 30, 2021

Predicting rain doesn’t count

ark
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If you’re a weatherman, the ability to predict the rain is important. For the rest of us, the actions we take once we know it’s going to rain are really what matters.

As Warren Buffet has said:

Predicting rain doesn’t count. Building arks does.

The Nintendo Wii

Back in early 2012, I remember a quiet growing buzz about the upcoming Nintendo Wii. Nintendo was coming off the rather lackluster GameCube, and the early buzz about the Wii was huge. However, it was only really being discussed in video game message boards, and the world wouldn’t find out about it until later. I remember thinking that someone should buy Nintendo stock and it’d likely do well. I was right, and their stock went from around $12 in 2012 to a peak of around $57 in 2018. That’s a nice return!

The problem is that I didn’t buy any. I predicted the rain, but didn’t build an ark.

It’s easy to make guesses about the future, and I do that quite a bit on this blog. For it to really count, though, you need to put your money where your mouth is and build some arks.

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