A short Sunday musing that may or may not make sense. I've thought about flow, or being in the zone, whatever you want to call it, a lot recently. I love Stan Druckenmiller's interview where he talks about knowing when you're hot or cold.

That is so, so important. You're not always seeing the ball well, and when you are you need to press your advantage. This ties in with the idea of "not spreadsheeting it" and moving quickly when you see an opportunity.

That strategy is also an easy way to blow up. We are human - we are arrogant, overconfident, naive, etc. That's why it's so important to really have self-knowledge and feel not only when you are hot or cold, but when you are neither, which is likely most of the time.

There's a saying in baseball that pitcher gets five starts per year where their stuff is amazing and they will dominate, five starts where they have nothing and get killed, and the middle twenty are what makes the difference between All Stars and guys heading back to the minors.

Absolutely think that's the case in investing. When you're cold you need to either step away or play super cautiously. When you're neutral perhaps slightly more aggressive, but don't do anything that could permanently impair your capital, and when you're hot you need to press.

Any athlete can tell you that there are times when they knew what was going to happen with certainty, even if it didn't make sense. Anyone watching knew that Tiger woods was going to make that putt on 18 to force a playoff against Rocco in the '08 US Open.

On a (much!) lower level there were (relatively few) times where I could say 'fastball in here, he'll foul it off or swing and miss, then changeup low and away and he'll swing through" and it would happen.

Anyway when I've been looking at deals recently in addition to looking at the merits on the deal level I'm trying to underwrite where I am emotionally and whether I'm hot or cold.