My dad was an engineering professor, but his true passion was the stock market. When I was six or seven years old, he brought me to a local brokerage office in Guangzhou.

It was the early 1990s and the room was packed with men, all smoking. People cheered when the live stock prices started showing up—it was electrifying. After that, I helped him chart stock prices on the only empty wall in our house.

I’m pretty sure my parents were disappointed that I took a job in investing, because stock trading is a universal hobby in many Asian countries. The recent meme-stock madness in the United States has been happening for decades in Japan, Korea, and China.

I joined Lehman Brothers in 2006 and was at HBS when it crashed in 2008. That day, Professor Clayton Rose led an impromptu case study of the company I had just left. It was surreal. He was matter-of-fact and analytical but also compassionate.

In investing, we talk about a hubris-to-humility cycle. When you’re on a fantastic run, it’s human to think you can take risks and sort it out on the other end. I love investing in companies that have been humbled, after things have gone wrong.

I also really like this saying in investing (and life): “Observation, not prediction.” As a predictor, you have a view and look for evidence to support it. As an observer, I try to forget what I believed yesterday and look at today’s events with a fresh set of eyes.

The Asian markets are certainly volatile these days, but times like these train investors to be better risk managers—and that makes better investors in the long run.

We already have the numbers, or the “what,” when we meet with a potential investment. We need to drill down to the “how” and “why.” Only a human can tell that story.

I can research any region, industry, or company and have a good chance of hearing the entrepreneurial journey of an 85-year-old founder. Who gets to do that?

Most people get their job review once a year. I get one every single day. Your return is your return, a real-time scoreboard for everyone to see.

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