Trading sardines, or eating sardines?

Mid-week market update: Experienced investors know the story about the difference between trading sardines and eating sardines. Here is how Seth Klarman recounted the story:

There is the old story about the market craze in sardine trading when the sardines disappeared from their traditional waters in Monterey, California. The commodity traders bid them up and the price of a can of sardines soared. One day a buyer decided to treat himself to an expensive meal and actually opened a can and started eating. He immediately became ill and told the seller the sardines were no good. The seller said, “You don’t understand. These are not eating sardines, they are trading sardines.”‘

Like sardine traders, many financial-market participants are attracted to speculation, never bothering to taste the sardines they are trading. Speculation offers the prospect of instant gratification; why get rich slowly if you can get rich quickly?

Klarman continued:

Speculation involves going along with the crowd, not against it. There is comfort in consensus; those in the majority gain confidence from their very number. Today many financial-market participants, knowingly or unknowingly, have become speculators. They may not even realize that they are playing a “greater-fool game,” buying overvalued securities and expecting—hoping—to find someone, a greater fool, to buy from them at a still higher price.

There is great allure to treating stocks as pieces of paper that you trade. Viewing stocks this way requires neither rigorous analysis nor knowledge of the underlying businesses. Moreover, trading in and of itself can be exciting and, as long as the market is rising, lucrative. But essentially it is speculating, not investing.

In light of the surprising and powerful stock market rally off the March bottom, you have to ask yourself, "Am I looking for trading sardines, or eating sardines?"

The full post can be found here.