Being good at something

This is a piece about the psychology of investing money that starts with a nice comparison. On the one hand, we have Grace Groner, orphaned at 12, lived most of her life alone in a one-bedroom house and worked her whole career as a secretary. She died leaving $7m to charity. On the other hand, we have Richard Fuscone, former vice chairman of Merrill Lynch’s Latin America division, educated at Harvard and University of Chicago. He went bankrupt, telling a judge, "I have been devastated by the financial crisis … The only source of liquidity is whatever my wife is able to sell in terms of personal furnishings." (Turns out he was no good at selling personal furnishings either.)

The writer goes on to say this: "In what other field does someone with no education, no relevant experience, no resources, and no connections vastly outperform someone with the best education, the most relevant experiences, the best resources and the best connections? There will never be a story of a Grace Groner performing heart surgery better than a Harvard-trained cardiologist. Or building a faster chip than Apple’s engineers." His answer is that it happens in investing because investing is about having a good temperament, as Ms Groner turned out to have.

That got me thinking. In what other fields can ordinary people excel?

First, there is the "occasional touch of genius" category. In Any Human Heart, Logan Mountstuart comments that in golf it is readily possible for the amateur to hit a shot that cannot be bettered. If you get a hole-in-one, with the trajectory of the ball following exactly the curve described in your mind's eye, then Tiger Woods could not have done better. The occasional golfer won't beat Tiger Woods over 18 holes - and certainly not over a tournament. But that chance of tasting the golden fruits of perfection must be part of the attraction of golf. Think of keen amateur divers who occasionally enter the water just right, or snooker players who get a 147 break with no luck involved.

Something similar might be true of telling jokes or making funny comments: once in a while, a group of friends will be reduced to breathless laughter by a well-timed one-liner that no professional comedian could have bettered. Perhaps your funny friend wouldn't be able to persuade a thousand strangers to part with £20 to hear him tell jokes for an evening, but for that conversation, among those friends, there is no one funnier. 

Second, there is the "trivial endeavour" category, i.e. activities that can be performed perfectly with a realistic amount of effort. Noughts and crosses is an example: I can confidently say that I - along with any child who has made a serious wet playtime study of the subject - am an unbeatable AlphaGo at noughts and crosses. That just means that I draw with the Fuscones of this world, not that I beat them. But nonetheless there is a small area of human endeavour that I have conquered, a very very small Kilimanjaro.

Not that these endeavours are necessarily pointless. I daresay there are plenty of people who have carefully optimised their daily commutes - which road to cross and when, where to stand on the platform - such that no one can possibly improve on their routes. They are quietly pleased with themselves about it. And why not?

But we are not really answering the original question: are there areas similar to investing, i.e. where there is a set of people doing the activity for a living, and yet an amateur with the right mindset might do it better? Perhaps in fields such as counselling or mentoring. I don't mean dealing with people with psychiatric conditions, but rather tasks outside the purview of medical science, such as consoling the bereaved or gee-ing up the ambitious, steering young adults through career choices or older ones through rocky patches in their personal lives. In these areas, I can imagine that a sympathetic and wise amateur could well exceed the well-meaning but booktrained professional.

Here's a different question: what kinds of variety of excellence are possible? Cowen writes, apropos of the niche for shorter people at the top levels of tennis, "As the logic of meritocracy advances, and the pool of talent is searched more efficiently, perhaps individuals with a clear natural advantage — whether size, smarts, or something else — become a larger percentage of top achievers.  Yet those wonderful “natural athletes” will have their weaknesses, just as Shaquille O’Neal had hands too large for the effective shooting of free throws.  So a second but smaller tier opens up for individuals who have the smarts, versatility, and “training mentality” to fill in the gaps left open by the weaknesses of the most gifted." Left-handers having a niche in the world of right-handers is another angle on this. And here I return to investing: is it possible that algorithms, with their ideal temperaments, will be the 'tall tennis players' of investing - the perfect 'percentage players' - but leaving a small but profitable niche for the mercurial talents of humans?