My commentary here begins like a movie review, but it's not. It's not even about finance. That said...
... I saw the movie Moneyball this past weekend. You don't have to like baseball (or sports at all) to enjoy the film. It's great storytelling.
I'd read the book several years ago, so I know the movie got it right. It tells how the insights of outsiders actually broke through into one major league organization in the early 2000s, namely the Oakland A's. Those insights allowed the club's general manager (Billy Bean) to do the impossible -- preserve one of the smallest payrolls in baseball, yet keep Oakland a playoff team.
At that time, management decisions in pro baseball were too often an irrational mix of opinions, vanity, fear, and tradition. This list of follies also describes the investment decisions of most people.
The rational outsiders described in Moneyball looked only at facts and data. They quantified the talents that most consistently predicted why players would succeed or fail -- and why teams would win or lose.
This mindset will appeal to anyone who understands Elliott Wave analysis: We follow wherever the "facts and data" lead, and leave irrationality to the majority.
But for all its utility, the Moneyball approach to talent does have limits. Some talent can be too rare to quantify; perhaps so exclusively rare that it's unique. In such cases the word invaluable applies literally -- you can't attach a value, because you can't make meaningful comparisons.
And if you lose unique talent, the loss is irreplaceable. Like genius.
Yesterday was an acute reminder of this truth. After dinner I had dozed off on the couch. My daughter called the house and my wife handed me the phone. What my daughter said made me reply "No!" I grabbed my cell to scan the news. The first thing I saw instead was a text message from my best friend: "Steve Jobs died."
"Irreplaceable genius" is as close as words can get, but even that falls short. Steve Jobs was too unique to describe. Still, I can hardly fault all the people who've been trying in the countless tributes today.
I suspect that his most lasting influence may be the one which only began with technology, yet will ripple out for decades to come and beyond. People who saw and used his work had the revelation that if exquisite design is possible for a computer, well, it must be possible for anything that humans make.
Thanks for reading.