Jason Hall

Warren Buffett probably wrote more words about his investing mistakes than he did his successes.

And if the greatest of our time has failures, that means it's okay.

So it's less about batting average and more about slugging percentage to throw a sports metaphor in here.

But the process, when we think about it more holistic, I think that really helps us as investors.

And it's been said a million times, the most you can lose on a single stock you bought is 100% while the upside is theoretically unlimited.

Realistically, upside is definitely limited for most businesses, but the kernel there is asymmetric returns, meaning that the upside is far greater than the downside.

That's a feature of investing stocks, and when you start making that part of your mindset and the way you think about stocks,

It really helps.

Now, let's use MercadoLibre and Intuitive Surgical just as a couple of Rule Breaker examples.

These have been in the Rule Breaker service for a very long time.

They're big winners.

We can go back to the beginning of 2010 for both, just as an example.

I think the market is up around 700% in total returns since that period.

That's an incredible run for the stock market.

But Intuitive Surgical is up 1,570%.

MercadoLibre is a 39-bagger.

So we've gotten 16 times and 39 times that initial investment in total returns on those two stocks.

Now, to put it another way, Emily, and this is where it gets really powerful, let's say you bought Intuitive Surgical back in 2010, and you also bought 10 other stocks at the same time, invested the same money in those other 10 stocks, and all 10 of them went bankrupt.

you still would have earned 570% in gains because Intuitive Surgical did well.

Now, if it was MercadoLibre, you could have bought MercadoLibre and 37 other stocks that went to zero and you still would have made money.