The value of the flip flop

What do you call a Frenchman in sandals? Phillipe Phillop.

With that out of the way, we can get to the point. Long or Short Capital, a good financial satire site, has an occasional series of Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing. Well here's one, an entirely serious one, from an excellent article by Julian Baggini:

The trouble with most people is not that they lack the courage to stick to their guns, but they don't have the greater bravery to change course. Consistency is a good thing, but not when it is understood as simply refusing to change your mind...To worry more about whether you've stuck with your views than about how they stack up now is to value loyalty to ideas more than fidelity to the truth.

Great traders have great ideas. But more than that, when they have an idea that does not work out, they take the trade off. They don't invest too much in any particular idea -- because they know that if it doesn't work out, they need to be able to recognise that, learn the lesson and move on.