I remember the moment like it was yesterday. The date was April 2008. As an investor with less than three years of experience back then, my stock portfolio had been beaten down and was in shambles. Of course, what I didn’t know was that a massive market crash, soon to be known as the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), was already happening. Even then, my mind was elsewhere. Because what I read would change the way I invest forever.

A message from January 2008

On a fateful day, I came across a letter from Bill Nygren, a manager for the Oakmark Select Fund. More importantly, it was what Nygren described — a tactic by former hedge fund manager Micheal Steinhardt — that caught my eye. In Nygren’s own words: “Perhaps Steinhardt’s most interesting tactic was selling his entire portfolio when he was frustrated with his performance. As he explained: “I did not think we were in sync with the market, and…