From Past to Future

I don't really like to be asked to introduce myself by brief descriptions, because I do not think simply talking about what I like what I hate or where I've been to can really describe me. I think people are made by stories, not by single dots--I always like to hear people's stories, good or bad, from what I can get a better sense of who they are and how they are and more important, why they are who they are and how they are now.

We always say, it's the past that made who we are now. I really believe so--everything happens with a cause, our past affect our behaviors today, and what we do today will affect our future.  To that logic, many people may think the past of one person decides one's future, which I don't think is true, since our life is going on continuously, and every moment can affect the next moment, and whichever one is closer has more effect than what happened before (assume what happening is at the same level as what happened before). I never judge people from their past, even though I always try to know as many past stories of them as possible, I just try to understand what made them today, but I don't think that's what they will be in the future. I'd look more today and the "trend" to think what they will be in the future. 

It's just like when we analyze stocks.  Most people, even most professional analysts look at a stock by its past performance to predict it's future and make their investment decision today. But we all know that past performance and future performance can be totally different, it should just be a reference--people still rely on it because it's the only information they have, and barely anyone thinks about what is the underlying reason of its performance/trend up to now and what is the story it is really telling us between the numbers--only the outstanding top people do.

I remember in my Investment class in school, the professor kept emphasizing "forward looking", at that time I read the existing numbers, calculate the intrinsic values, and predict in the long term if the value will go up/down, then make decision if I should purchase/sell the stock. Theoretically that works perfectly, but it's not very realistic in operation--it may be true that eventually it will arrive to its intrinsic value, but who knows how long that will take, and the value can change over time with different events as well. And in the real world when we need fast reactions, it doesn't work any more. 

The real forward looking, in general, for me, is to see, or I should say, observe carefully, the current situation (PRESENT), find out the causes (from the PAST), analyze them, and find the underlying order to find the possible future trends, then adjust the valuation of the FUTURE with the ongoing events. 

Sometimes we rely too much on existing information, but remember we don't get all the information? and some information we get can be wrong and/or misleading as well. Sometimes we just have to make reasonable assumptions to make decisions, and we do have to trust our intuition more than the partial information we have--though I have to say, the intuition comes from observations, analysis, practice and experiences, not just a pure guess out of nowhere...so BE AWARE :)