1/8 Thread: East Coast vs West Coast approach to investing

I am using East Coast and West Coast less from geographical perspective, and more from general approach to investing.

You can be in the East Coast and have a West Coast approach to investing, and vice versa.

2/8 Broadly speaking, East Coast cares more about the details and wants to see the numbers that back the narrative.

West Coast tends to be a bit loose on the details, and focuses on understanding the big picture. The goal is to imagine what the end state looks like.

3/8 East Coast approach is more humbling as they understand it can be difficult to see the big picture and tends to gravitate towards increasing batting average.

West Coast approach is much more ambitious, cares little about batting average, and all it worships is the slugging%

4/8 While survivorship bias is endemic to every approach, it is particularly prominent in the West Coast.

Those who survive the poor batting avg and compensate with extremely high slugging% can enjoy the visionary status. They become visionary because they *got* the big picture

5/8 As I was going through the twitter threads this week on the recent GME saga, it was stunning to see how little details some of the West Coast people could provide to back up their claims.

6/8 Their claims were more outrageous, and if some of them prove to be right later, they will bask in the glory and their visionary status will enhance exponentially.

If not, ignorance is usually a good excuse. If it doesn’t work, you eventually become irrelevant.

7/8 East coast threads were much more detailed and lengthier, and frankly, at times hard to follow for non-finance people. The flow of their narrative is nothing like the West Coast.

Even if they are right, the glory will probably be less by a factor of 10.

8/8 While East Coast and West Coast approach are certainly not binary, the more you gravitate towards one approach the more you feel there is a real tension between them.

And boy, I felt it this week.