Speaking to a guy that OWNS a bank about canaries

People with immense wealth have a different view of the world. They have a savant-like ability to see through the noise, detect patterns or opportunities that most of us are too distracted to see.

I’m still in two minds about if this ability to act as a canary in a coal mine is something that is a pre-disposition or something acquired. But, if we assume that this is an acquired skill, then it begs the questions — how do you learn this skill? how quickly can you be effective at it?

Speaking with this banker, it was apparent the way he looked at the world was indeed different, so here’s my attempt to ‘acquire’ his savant-like skills in analysis by dissecting our interaction… when asking questions they were fundamental, pushing me to simplify to the core essence, my point. They were smart, looking for the gap in the logic, the inconsistency in the story, the tell in the poker face.

Example questions -

“aren’t you concerned about differentiation? how will you address this?”

“i’m old, i don’t really get tech, can you explain this more simply for me? how would it work?”

“where do you see this going? how will it play out next?”

As you can see, these questions are deceptively simple, but very revealing, as simple answer to this tells as much as a complex answer, and the more complex the answer the more you can tell if the person answering knows their stuff or if they’re just a snake-oil salesmen. At the same time, they aren’t detailed, if you knew nothing about a subject and asked these questions, i’m fairly certain these questions would give you sufficient information to at least screen or vet the opportunity as being realistic or simply pie in the sky.

The formal meeting with the banker went quite well, and was followed by dinner. At dinner he was recalling a story about how his daily commute took him past a scaffold storage yard where they kept scaffold piping for construction. He recalled how he knew the market was picking up when the scaffold yard began to empty and how that was a signal to act on. Which was really cool as a ‘Superfreakonomics’ Malcom Gladwell-ian analysis, its just highlighted how this guys observational skills gave him an edge, some how, by experience or instinct he was able to build that link that most of us would take for granted. I think this can be trained however, as its about deliberately identifying causal and correlatory relationships between measurable, but the challenge is how do you develop the finesse to do this quickly and accurately?

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