Dont hero-worship: learn the method, not the tips

Every year, one lucky person wins a huge lottery, and their photo appears everywhere. We see the winner, smiling, holding the giant cheque. What we never see are the millions of people who bought the same ticket and won nothing. They do not get photographs. So the lottery looks like a good idea - because we only ever see the winners, never the crowd of losers standing invisibly behind them.

This trick of the eye has a name: survivorship. It means we judge things by looking only at the survivors - the ones who made it - and forgetting all the ones who tried the same thing and failed, because they are quiet and hidden. It fools us again and again. And it is at its most dangerous when we look at a star investor like Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. He was brilliant and hard-working, and he became rich and famous. But standing invisibly behind him are thousands of people who took similar risks, bet big, used borrowed money - and lost. We remember him. We forgot them. This study is a caution: do not worship the star, and above all do not blindly copy a star's tips. Learn how he read businesses instead.

There is a huge difference between two things that look similar: copying someone's tips and learning someone's method. Copying a tip means hearing "he bought this share" and rushing to buy it too, without understanding why. Learning a method means studying how he decided - how he read a business, judged its growth, sized his bets, and stayed patient - and then doing that careful work yourself, on businesses you understand.

Copying tips is dangerous for several plain reasons. You do not know why he bought, so you do not know when he might sell - you could be holding after he has quietly moved on. You do not know his full situation: he could afford to be wrong on this bet; you might not. And by the time a famous investor's move reaches you through news and WhatsApp, the price may already have jumped. A tip is a fish handed to you; you eat once and then you are hungry again, and helpless. A method is learning to fish; it feeds you for life and works on businesses no tipster ever mentions.

Look at the two sides. The crowd on the left surrounds the star, copying its every move, learning nothing - if the star stumbles, the whole crowd falls with it. The lone person on the right is doing the slow, unglamorous work of reading and understanding. It looks less exciting. But only that person is actually building skill they can use for the rest of their life. The reading lesson is this: admire a great investor, by all means, but admire the thinking, not the person, and never the tip. Take home the questions he asked, not the answers he happened to reach.

illustrative Survivorship is easiest to feel with numbers. Suppose 1,000 people each take the same kind of big, bold, borrowed bets a star trader took. Because such bets are so risky, imagine how they turn out over some years.

These figures are invented to show the shape of the thing, not to be exact. But the shape is the point. Out of a thousand people taking the same bold risks, perhaps five become stars whose photos and stories are everywhere. The other 995 - the ones who did nothing special, and the great many who were wiped out - are silent. We never read about them. So when a young person looks at the five winners and thinks "if I take those same risks, I will get those same results," they are making the lottery mistake. They are looking at the survivors and ignoring the vast hidden crowd who took the identical path to ruin.

This does not mean the five winners were merely lucky - many, including Jhunjhunwala, had real skill and worked extremely hard. But skill was not enough on its own; the risky path still destroyed most who walked it, skilled or not. Judging the path by its handful of survivors makes a dangerous road look like a safe one. The honest way to look is to include the hidden 900 - and then the "just copy the star" idea suddenly looks very different.

Do not swing into believing skill is fake. The point of survivorship is not that every winner was just lucky and skill does not matter. That would be the opposite mistake. Real skill exists, and Jhunjhunwala clearly had it. The correct lesson is humbler: skill improves your chances but does not guarantee the result, and copying a skilled person's risks without their skill, knowledge, and cushion is how the hidden crowd got wiped out.

Heroes are still worth learning from - just carefully. Rejecting hero-worship does not mean ignoring great investors. It means taking the right thing from them: their patience, their homework, their way of reading a business - the parts that are teachable and safe. Throwing away everything a master can teach, out of a fear of copying, wastes a real gift. Admire the method; distrust the tip.

The tip feels like a shortcut, which is exactly why it is a trap. Copying a famous person's buy feels fast, easy, and safe - "if he did it, it must be fine." That comfortable feeling is the danger. It lets you skip the homework, and skipping the homework is precisely what leaves you helpless when the price moves or the star moves on. The easier a stock tip feels, the more suspicious you should be of it.

In India, hero-worship of investors runs especially strong, and Jhunjhunwala was loved like a cricket star. That love is understandable - he was inspiring - but it becomes dangerous the moment it turns into "just buy whatever the big investor is buying." Whole WhatsApp groups and TV segments are built on exactly this: passing around a famous person's supposed holdings as if that alone were a reason to buy. It is not. It is the lottery-winner photo, dressed up as advice.

Here is the honest transfer. Treat every great investor, including Jhunjhunwala, as a teacher, not a tipster. Study how he thought - the long patience, the careful reading of businesses, the belief in India's growth, and even his honesty about his own mistakes and risky bets. Take those lessons and apply them yourself, to businesses you understand, at prices you have judged. But never hand over your judgement by copying a hero's trades blindly. Remember the hidden crowd behind every star, remember that his risky methods ruined most who tried them, and keep doing your own homework. The greatest respect you can pay a master is to learn to think, not to line up and copy.

• Count the hidden losers. Whenever a winner is held up as proof a path works, ask how many took the same path and failed silently. The survivors are only part of the picture.
• Separate method from tip. Learn how a great investor thinks and reads; never just copy what they bought. One is a skill for life, the other is a fish for a day.
• Distrust the easy shortcut. If buying a share feels effortless because "a famous person did it," treat that comfort as a warning to slow down and do your own homework.
• Remember you lack their full picture. You rarely know a star's reasons, timing, or safety cushion. Copying their trade without those is copying blind.
• Admire skill without over-trusting it. Real skill helps but never guarantees. Do not assume a hero's risky methods are safe just because they worked for the hero.
• Do the unglamorous work. The lone reader doing their own homework is learning something the copying crowd never will. Choose to be that reader.