Before I start…One of the funniest comedians working right now is Sebastian Maniscola. This clip will make your day:

Onward…

The biggest argument when it comes to public market investing is the usefulness of charts.

I use them for pattern recognition. For example, these large cap stocks closed at all-time highs yesterday.

For some it may be the first day, for others – Like Amazon, Netflix, Mastercard and Salesforce it’s been a daily, monthly and yearly occurrence.

I like to shop for all my stocks on the different all-time high lists. Looking at thousands of these charts of stocks a month you start to see patterns that go beyond the names.

The argument over pattern recognition (and chart reading) happens in the early stage investing world as well.

I don’t think it works well. It is almost the opposite of my public market investing style when it comes to pattern recognition.

This post on the ‘Case Against Pattern Recognition‘ sums it up really well (at least for me).