Travis Wiedower

LGIH WELX WFCF

^^ Makes sense. I remember seeing something years ago that the average male CEO in the US was 6' while the average height for a male was 5'9" (numbers may be off, barely remember it).

Not convinced this means much. Four is a tiny sample size and it's easy to retroactively find indicators like this that look nice in a rear view mirror.

Joel, Only read the executive summary but that's really interesting. Sounds eerily similar to hedge funds!

This article enticed me to read and think about VCs quite a bit the past few days. I jotted down some rambling thoughts you guys might enjoy (I could be totally wrong, who knows): "The best VC funds have a moat similar to top basketball programs. UK, Duke, Kansas, and North Carolina are always near the top. You get the best coach, you get good players, you get results, you attract more talent and it's a flywheel effect. Every once in a while a team like Butler breaks out, but the majority of the best teams every year are the same. Similar flywheel effect with VCs--they have great investors that find great investments, generate high returns, attract more of the top potential companies, and repeat. Very hard for a new VC fund to become a big player (though it has happened a few times). In general, you hear about the same VC funds generating great returns. Because of this, even if VC returns as a whole are above average, the majority of those returns are in the top funds and the rest are underperforming. Could be a VC bubble that results in more small companies going public."

AMNF and PDEX are two small-caps I own that don't do conference calls or guidance. Management is still open to talking to shareholders though.

Great read. The entire article I was thinking about the Long-Term Stock Exchange... then it all made sense at the end ;D I have talked to a few people who want to take their company public in the future and in each case I advised them not to. Running a public company sounds awful to me.

In defense of a lot of people (not myself because I didn't vote), them "supporting" Trump was just them thinking Trump could help their personal situation more than Hillary could. Unfortunately, there was no "candidate with integrity" option in this election.

A lot of people need a lot more than $500k to retire.

I really enjoy blogging and would love to post more, I just don't find great ideas very often. This entire year I've only made four "core" investments (plus a few small short-term plays) so there's not a ton to write about. I suspect that's the case with a lot of bloggers. The market is up a lot the past several years so the opportunities are thinning out. It is extremely valuable though. My investor network is multiples of what it was before I started my blog. I probably need to listen to Nate and post more general investing stuff as opposed to trying to focus on specific ideas.

USA hopefully.

Add me to the list of people who prefer UA over Nike. I was a loyal Nike fan my entire life, but transitioned all my athletic wear to UA over the past year or two. UA stuff is vastly superior IMO. A couple months ago I started paying attention to clothing brands at the gym and UA is definitely more common than Nike (sample size of one gym though so that's not worth much).

I haven't purchased clothes in person in 4-5 years. Most online sizing guides are pretty accurate (measure a shirt that fits well then compare it to the guide) so getting the size right the first time isn't uncommon at all. With that being said, I'm happy to pay the cost of some returns/exchanges to avoid shopping in person, which is way more time consuming. And once you find a few brands you know and like, sizing is no problem and shopping takes minutes. I'm actually surprised retail isn't dying faster than it is.

I actually did write a letter to Buffett last year. He hasn't responded :(

I think people take a lot of what he says too literally. My interpretation is that he believes over a full cycle his expected returns would be >50%. Doesn't mean he'd get it every year. In a million iterations of 2008/2009, do you really think he'd expect to gain >50% both years in all million iterations?

Didn't Allan Mecham lever up in 09 to buy as much BRK as he could? Pretty genius move in retrospect. But yeah, +1 to BG.

I think in general presidents get blamed for and get credit for way too many things they have little control over.

This is helpful. Last time I was in NYC I felt like I got violated for what I paid. I'm not used to good public transport systems so it's not something I even considered.

I recently met someone who makes ~$15k per year on the side selling bracelets from China. He ran across these cool/unique bracelets somewhere, bought a small amount, put up a landing page, did some social media marketing, people bought them, and he slowly grew it from there. Now he buys in bulk. I think he buys them for a couple bucks apiece and sells them for $10-15. I've done some random stuff in the past to make money on the side, but my real jobs keep me too busy now-a-days. If you pay attention there are a lot of ways to make money doing/selling just about anything.

What a fascinating story--will probably be a good book/movie in a few years depending how it turns out. My big takeaway from following this since the beginning is to not put so much trust in reputable news sources. It's easy to assume they've done their homework and it turns out very few of them had (myself included, I believed all the great stuff I heard about her). Theranos gets added to a few other blowups (Ocwen, Valeant) that have taught me a lot the past few years.

Interactive Brokers has good tools for this. Does your broker not?

I think there was a little more to it than that! But either way, serious question, who do you consider the most successful businessmen since you think innovation is such a key part of that title? I feel like every super successful businessman that I've ever looked into inevitably "copied" their idea from somewhere else. PS. I'd argue Jobs was an innovator, but we must have different interpretations of that word.

Big +1 to rkbabang. Also, I must rank integrity as a bigger contributing factor to success than some of y'all. I don't care how much money Biglari or Trump have made, they aren't successful human beings in my book.

I was reading up on Justin Trudeau this past week and am very jealous of y'all. If he wants to move south he has my vote vs Trump and Hillary.

I've said on here before that Gates doesn't get as much respect as he deserves. His foundation is incredible. Whether you define "most successful" by wealth, business success, or lives impacted/improved, he's right up there with anybody.