My name is Joseph Lu. I am a portfolio manager and a business consultant and I have over a decade of professional investment experience. You know, nonprofessional experience goes well beyond that. And I'm here to share with you some of the lessons that I've learned through my journey of investing. So the first thing I'd like people to know we're in the space and the thing on that is, is as you know, one thing you'll notice as I focus a lot about people and, the thing I want you to understand is investing is a people industry.
It's a connection industry. So the first thing I'd like you to know is that like investing is about balance, you know, in your portfolio and psychologically. There's a large amount of paradoxes that exist in investing. Like, that you think about momentum versus value investors. I mean, those guys fight like cats and dogs sometimes.
One person will think something as cheap as he thinks that something is going to the moon has just like a limited amount of potential. So I would say you always should be learning about yourself. Always been learning about your biases, always be learning, period. And you know, because ultimately that investment success out of a portfolio manager is going to come from you be a permanent student.
That's number one. Number two, for a lot of allocators, know your role and play well, know the expectations are brought on for you. Communicate those expectations. Know what roles your analysts or your team or your salesperson or other portfolio managers play. Understand your clients. Understand the expectations that they have and communicate. You know, like I think about when I think about investing, there's like three major roles when it comes to the investment process.
It's security selection, allocation and implementation. So understand where you fit in that role as investment professionals. There's a variety of large firm. I mean, there's a large variety of firms out there and everyone, you know, sort of take cross over on different roles at different times. So connectors your managers connect with an analyst? And just remember that the financial industry is ultimately an action industry.
Number three, you understand and manage your goals and risks. So diversification, it's almost always your first line of defense, right? Yeah, oftentimes. And the problem is it generally about terminal views. And once again, that goes into the idea of balance that that I was talking about. And I think it's very helpful to not have like a terminal point or be stuck on a terminal point.
Like, you know, inflation is peaking or, you know, you know, China will invade Taiwan, but have those like definitive points of views and understand the other side of things where you have to really communicate your point of view, but create scenarios and probabilities in your mind. So you sort of have no idea what the spectrum of possibilities are.
Have a plan. I always think about why you're investing in something and what will make you reconsider or an investment thesis. Have an exit strategy in mind, understanding why you got in and when you'll get out. Number four, this is where, you know, we're starting to get a little more technical. I know a lot of, you know, investment matters a lot a lot of the Research Center on Performance and Performance Analysis.
And I would argue this I mean, typically what's hot in academia is that technical investing, technical analysis is worthless. It's it's like reading tea leaves. But when you think about what technical analysis really is, it's it's performance analysis. And so I found in my career that incorporating some level of technical analysis with high performance analysis usually yields really great results.
And that that sort of goes into my office, which is also a bit of a opposing viewpoint. I understand do your research, understand your investment, don't just chase the performance, don't just buy the dip, understand the process that created the performance you're currently seeing, whether it's on a manager level or a company level and just understand too that managers will go through cycles just like the economy does.
Past performance doesn't equal future performance and in understanding, we'll call it the fundamentals of why you're investing in something that will allow you to fall through much greater times of volatility. Really appreciate you listening, and I hope that you can find some value in the wisdom and mistakes that I have made throughout the years. I mean, think if I could point to everything and it's just remember that investing is a people driven process.
It's, you know, don't stay in your head with all the numbers. Go talk to people.