Teaminvest Wealth Builders

Invert, Always Invert: Finding the Risks Great Investors Miss | Wealthy+Wise Ep24

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0:00 | 31:14

Most investors spend their time asking one question: what should I buy? Charlie Munger thought there was a better one — what should I avoid? This week, Howard Coleman (Team Invest) and Mark Humphrey-Jenner (University of New South Wales) sit down to explore inversion: the discipline of deliberately asking what could go wrong before asking what could go right.

Howard and Mark unpack why humans default to first-order thinking, how the Team Invest process scores risks for likelihood and impact, and why an IPO is best read as a marketing document rather than an opportunity. They also draw a careful parallel between today's AI enthusiasm and past technology cycles — without dismissing AI outright, since some of it will make genuine money and some of it won't.

In the second half, Howard puts four familiar ASX names through the inversion test: Cochlear's capital allocation missteps, ProMedicus's price-to-earnings blowout, QBE's insurance economics, and NEXTDC's capital-intensive, low-moat business model. Wonderful businesses, in some cases — but wonderful businesses bought at the wrong price, or run by the wrong capital allocators, can still be poor investments.

SEGMENT OUTLINE

00:00 – Welcome and introducing inversion

03:20 – Second-order thinking, portfolio optimisation, and budgeting

06:17 – Emotion, confirmation bias, and market cycles

09:58 – IPOs as marketing documents

11:16 – Inversion across asset classes, and the AI parallel

14:55 – Why value investors aren't pessimists

21:16 – Stock case studies: Cochlear, ProMedicus, QBE, NEXTDC

29:41 – Wrap-up

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