Liberty

Thank you Partner24, I appreciate you sharing your perspective.

Thanks, that was a good read.

Partner, has your thinking on the firm changed in the years since you posted the above? Same question for Sanjeev or anyone else who wants to share their current opinion on Giverny. Thanks.

This made me think of this very interesting article in a recent Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21645497-tech-startups-are-moving-food-business-make-sustainable-versions-meat No doubt this kind of stuff is the future long term, as our current animal farming is not sustainable and doesn't scale (as well as not being humane, and not always healthy).

There is and Liberty, you are a smart and thoughtful investor and I guarantee you have thought more about Valeant than I have and thus it is more squarely in your circle of competence than mine. No worries if you don't want to discuss it. I'm always looking for more info in case I come across a line of thinking or a piece of info that I hadn't considered before, which might make me change my mind. Just promise that if you have something groundbreaking, you'll private-message me or post it in the Valeant thread ;)

I'm starting to do some research on Giverny and Rochon. Always looking for good places to invest my capital if I ever decide to stop managing it myself (in part or all), or maybe for my wife's. Seems interesting so far. Anyone knows what's the minimum investment in their fund? Sounds like you can only invest through a National Bank account. Is that correct? Thanks in advance.

Care to elaborate on your views of Valeant? Not really. If you don't have anything nice to say....as the saying goes. Actually, it is not that I don't have anything nice to say, I absolutely admire what they have built and what the value that Mike Pearson has created. But I have other thoughts too that aren't positive, so I'll just leave them alone. But negative thoughts is exactly what I was looking for.. :-\

Care to elaborate on your views of Valeant?

Thanks.

More: http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2015/03/decomp/ http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2015/03/payout/

This seems so strange. Does it really exist and does it have a legitimate use? It does exist, it doesn't have a legitimate use. At one point in Flash Boys they find that some exchange had created something like 25 undocumented order types that most people don't have access to, or even know exist, but scammy HFTs uses them to sniff things out and bait orders.

Financiers nakedly pursue their own self interest and the pursuit of self interest is widely regarded as immoral. It's worse when you are taking money from other investors who 1) are playing by the rules 2) don't know what's happening and 3) can't do much about it. Having cheaters in a casino stealing from the house is one thing (and if the house found out, they used to break your legs, rather than sell you their deal flow and help you by creating new game rules that only you know about), but cheaters stealing from other players is another. The big institutional investors are in good part pension funds and such, it's not all hedgies getting skimmed. The trick that the high speed scammers are playing is they're trying to conflate all HFT, and then say "but spreads are lower than at any time". That's BS. Electronic trading is good, eletronic market makers are good. But people who front-run orders (to which they have access, or via weird order types that aren't meant to be filled) between exchanges by buying what people are trying to buy before them and then reselling higher has zero utility. It's basically letting a bunch of mosquitos in your house. If you removed that yucky part of HFT but kept electronic trading and market makers, it would have zero negative impact and many positive ones.

His "novel" is kicking a bunch of parasites in the teeth, so at least there's that :D

Tesla IPO'ed during the financial crisis and almost went bankrupt. Musk basically made it survive through sheer will (and putting every cent he had in it, borrowing money to pay rent). That was a much bigger trial by fire than they are likely to get, since at that time they were a small startup selling a few hundred $100k two-seaters during the worst crisis since the 1930s. They're a much more solid company now. Maybe the stock will go down a lot if multiples compress, but the business itself is more solid than its ever been. Saying they've never been through a downturn is incorrect. They have never been through a downturn. Startup pains when you have no product and no sales is very different from a downturn. You might be right though that Elon will deal with downturn just fine based on his startup and other company experiences. The company was founded in 2003. The Roadster was introduced to the public in 2006 and went on sale in 2008. I'd say that the 2008-2009 recession counts as a downturn and not just regular startup pains. They probably would have had lots of startup pains without the 2008-2009 crisis, but with it, they showed incredible resilience. Heck, GM and Chrysler went bankrupt. I think this does a great job pointing out the incredible advantage new companies have in capital intensive businesses (with the BIG if that they can raise capital) vs. the burden legacy companies from the 50's - 70's have from pension obligations! GM/Chrysler would have probably survived without a bailout if not for the outrageous benefits they could not re-define even when it became obvious those benefits would take down the company. This is occurring in small cities (or large ones like Detroit) all over the Northeast They would also probably have survived if they had been making good products that people wanted to buy at the time. Can't blame it all on one thing...

Tesla IPO'ed during the financial crisis and almost went bankrupt. Musk basically made it survive through sheer will (and putting every cent he had in it, borrowing money to pay rent). That was a much bigger trial by fire than they are likely to get, since at that time they were a small startup selling a few hundred $100k two-seaters during the worst crisis since the 1930s. They're a much more solid company now. Maybe the stock will go down a lot if multiples compress, but the business itself is more solid than its ever been. Saying they've never been through a downturn is incorrect. They have never been through a downturn. Startup pains when you have no product and no sales is very different from a downturn. You might be right though that Elon will deal with downturn just fine based on his startup and other company experiences. The company was founded in 2003. The Roadster was introduced to the public in 2006 and went on sale in 2008. I'd say that the 2008-2009 recession counts as a downturn and not just regular startup pains. They probably would have had lots of startup pains without the 2008-2009 crisis, but with it, they showed incredible resilience. Heck, GM and Chrysler went bankrupt.

Tesla IPO'ed during the financial crisis and almost went bankrupt. Musk basically made it survive through sheer will (and putting every cent he had in it, borrowing money to pay rent). That was a much bigger trial by fire than they are likely to get, since at that time they were a small startup selling a few hundred $100k two-seaters during the worst crisis since the 1930s. They're a much more solid company now. Maybe the stock will go down a lot if multiples compress, but the business itself is more solid than its ever been. Saying they've never been through a downturn is incorrect.

Good review and musings: http://www.innerscorecard.co/blog/2015/3/20/the-loneliness-of-honesty-review-how-to-get-rich-by-felix-dennis

Most of the people who have to go to office aren't very good at filling their time with things that bring deep satisfaction either. Stopping for a moment to consider the meaning (or meaninglessness) of your life might be harder and quite uncomfortable compared to just chugging along to the office ... or to a golf course. ;) That's true. But most of these people use that as an excuse; "if only I didn't have to work all the time and come home tired and have just enough time to cook food and put the kids to bed, I'd be so happy and doing so many great things!" But in reality, it's just a way to avoid living in the present, and to creates external excuses for lack of agency.

As I just wrote about on my blog, I think the book is also extremely applicable for financial independence (getting comfotably poor) as well as getting actually rich. I wonder what you think, as someone who as actually followed that path, more or less, for much longer than I have? Hmm, not sure what I think of it a few years later (I don't mean this negatively -- I have a general positive memory of it, the details are just more fuzzy). I think the main takeaway for me was probably reinforcing the idea (which it central to old classics like Your Money or Your life) that one of the things you can buy with money is freedom and time, and that it's important to figure out what makes you happy and what you like doing in life, because just getting rich isn't enough, it won't make you happy on its own (as many people find out). This sounds super obvious, but I wouldn't be surprised that the majority of people who don't have to work for a living (either through regular retirement or other ways to get to "don't have to go to the office") aren't very good at filling their time with things that bring deep satisfaction.

[amazonsearch]Becoming Steve Jobs[/amazonsearch] Advance reviews of this one are really good. This could actually be the book that gets it right. Looking forward to getting my pre-order.

https://overcast.fm/podcasts/episode/301881161682049 :)

Listened. Good one. http://overca.st/CDUXxQs-Q

http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2015/03/treps/

Nothing new, but Bill Gates commenting on the Berkshire letter and the 50th:

So you work in HFT, eh? I don't have to answer this, but no. And my opinion about him was the same before "Flash Boys" Opinions are opinions, no worries. But you have to admit, someone just had to ask, it was too obvious :D