LESSON ONE: New World Disorder

GO HOLLYWOOD: Ridley Scott is justifiably more famous for movies like Alien & Blade Runner. But he tackled the discovery story in 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992). The movie never quite manages to sail out of the doldrums, so you’ll need a bit of persistence to make it all the way though. 

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GET ANIMATED: Or, get all the drama in a fraction of the time. Fans of the Simpsons and Family Guy can get their Columbus fix in cartoon form. 

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GO SIDEWAYS: I’m talking about the markets, but if you want to grab a glass of pinot noir and watch the movie Sideways (2004) before hitting the books, I won’t judge. Then enjoy Vitaliy N. Katsenelson’s The Little Book of Sideways Markets: How to Make Money in Markets that Go Nowhere. His thesis? Stick with your strategy, collect your dividends and do not, under any circumstances, drink that merlot. 

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STOCK UP: Some books you read, some you own and some you revere. Stocks for the Long Run is one of the latter. Billed as The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns & Long-Term Investment Strategies, Jeremy Siegel’s classic tome demonstrates the benefits of time in the market the way no historian ever would: with numbers. 

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Leif Erikson Day in the United States

Leif Erikson Day honors a viking explorer known as Leif Erikson. He is believed to be the first recorded Nordic person to have visited North America. It is believed that he visited places such as Baffin Island and Labrador around 1000 CE.

TURN OVER A NEW LEIF: Columbus was not the first European to set foot on the American continent. The Icelandic explorer Leif Erikson is thought to have reached Newfoundland some five hundred years prior, though Leif the Lucky may have followed a trail pioneered by other Norse- men even earlier than the eleventh century. Celebrate his memory on Leif Erikson Day next October 9th. Yep, Leif deserves that kind of respect. 

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MAKE TIME TO REVIEW: Aside from time in the market, this lesson also reviews previous material including:

Anchoring bias: It has nothing to do with where Colum- bus parked the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Columbus underestimated the size of the globe, believing it was 63% of the actual circumference and to the end of his days he couldn’t accept anything much different.

Confirmation Bias: Columbus wanted to believe the islands he found were off the coast of Japan or China. But the natives in the New World looked and sounded nothing like the traders he had met from Asia, which might have given him pause. He saw everything that seemed to con- firm his theories and ignored whatever didn’t. In retrospect, Columbus came closest to the Asian continent as a teenager on a trading voyage into the Aegean Sea when he landed at the island of Khios in modern day Greece.
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Unintended consequences: Columbus didn’t intend to sicken and enslave a native population when he left Spain, he was just looking for a shortcut. But, as so often happens, shortcuts lead to outcomes not foreseen before the journey.