Howard Marks discussing data & information

The following quotes and text features investor, Mr Howard Marks, which has been extracted from an article I read in Friday’s May 16, 2014, Australian Financial Review. The story was titled “Day of reckoning for shares ‘inevitable” by James Eyers.

“With a deluge of information sloshing around the financial markets each day, Mr Marks suggests savvy investors must extract themselves from the 24-hour news cycle and not conflate the gathering of data with the gaining of wisdom.

“It is very important to recognise that data is not information, and information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom”.

“Wisdom consists of deriving the significance of data. You have to step back and say, ‘My goal is not to have as much data as I can, but to figure out which data is important and then get it, and then go away to the mountain top and figure out what it all means.’

I would pursue wisdom, not data.”