Liberty

Good thread by Michael Mauboussin about his 27th year teaching an investing class. He links off to a lot of interesting things, talks about what he's learned, etc.

Transcript of a talk titled “An Investor’s Odyssey: The Search for Outstanding Investments” that he gave in 2011 (sorry if it's a repost): http://www.valueinvestorconference.com/text/transcripts/Chuck%20Akre%20Transcript%20VIC%202011.pdf

Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.

I thought it was quite a good speech: https://microcapclub.com/2018/01/morgan-housel-industries-teach-us-investing/ Trancsript is here: https://microcapclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Morgan-Housel-on-What-Other-Industries-Teach-Us-About-Investing.pdf

Season 1 of this is one of the best comedies series I've seen. Up there with Freaks and Geeks.

Season 1 of the Expanse really impressed me. It felt on par with the best sci-fi ever (early Battlestar Galactica reboot). But I think after season 1 the writing quality goes down a lot and many characters suddenly become quite different from what they were early on, and more 2D.

Did anyone watch this? Haven't heard much about it anywhere...

Congrats to those who made a killing on this trade, I'm happy for you. Always nice to see it work out (well, for now -- don't know what tomorrow will bring).

Somehow we've watched none of the same Amazon Prime Video shows. My faves are Sneaky Pete S1 (kind of a mix between Justified and some Breaking Bad elements (produced by Brian Cranston and some Justified guys), Patriot S1 (LOVED this one, couldn't get into S2 yet), and Marvellous Mrs. Maisel (don't let the flowery title scare you, I really enjoyed S1 and can't wait to check out S2 -- it's written by Amy Sherman Palladino, of Gilmore Girls fame, but this is more adult and kind of Mad Men vibe in production level).

Wilbur dubbed over Mr Burns: https://twitter.com/skolanach/status/1088486734608838656?s=21 "To Wilbur Ross, saving 3,000 coal jobs is essential — but 800,000 government workers are a blip"

That's correct. I was also surprised (I didn't know much about it going on), but it actually increased my enjoyment because I think it's important that we get reminders once in a while of just how vile these regimes were. Historical distance and the death of first-hand victims is making it all more fuzzy over time...

Reporter: "What's the newest thing in science?" Scientist, feigning surprise: "Oh, so you already know all the old science?"

In the interview I link, the writer/director says that they didn't want to make fun of any of the real atrocities, since this is based on true events, so every time there's killing and torture and such, they play it straight. But once it's behind closed doors with the politicians, then the farce takes over.

I've enjoyed this recent podcast interview with Josh Wolfe: https://fs.blog/josh-wolfe/ And this previous one was also quite good, for those who missed it back then: http://investorfieldguide.com/wolfe/

I figured I'd try starting a thread about movies and TV shows that you liked enough to recommend. General rule of thumb would be, only post about it if you think it's better than 75% of what you've seen in the past couple years (obviously there's no way to enforce that, but I'm just trying to avoid having the thread flooded by everything people are watching). Please tell us a little about what the thing is and why you like it. I'll start. I watched 'The Death of Stalin' (2017) yesterday and really enjoyed it. It's definitely not for everyone, it's pretty dark satire, but I think the minority of people who will like it will really like it. It's kind of similar to some of what the Coens bros do, but talkier, kind of like if Aaron Sorkin wrote dialogue for a Coens movie, with a few bursts of Tarantino violence. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4686844/ Interestingly, after seeing it I looked up a few things and while there's obviously a lot of fiction, it's not as fictionalized as one might think. They even had to tone down a few things because the reality would've seemed unbelievable on screen, apparently. If you see it and want more, there's an interview with the writer here: https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/armando-iannucci-on-the-death-of-stalin/

We've reached the Marie-Antoinette phase:

Guessing that on average, yes. But for the top value investors, not falling for it is probably part of what makes them so good.

Nice goats

A man comes to the rabbi and complains about his life: "I have almost no money, my wife is a shrew, and we live in a small apartment with seven unruly kids. It's messy, it's noisy, it's smelly, and I don't want to live." The rabbi says, "Buy a goat." "What? I just told you there's hardly room for nine people, and it's messy as it is!" "Look, you came for advice, so I'm giving you advice. Buy a goat and come back in a month." In a month the man comes back and he is even more depressed: "It's gotten worse! The filthy goat breaks everything, and it stinks and makes more noise than my wife and seven kids! What should I do?" The rabbi says, "Sell the goat." A few days later the man returns to the rabbi, beaming with happiness: "Life is wonderful! We enjoy every minute of it now that there's no goat - only the nine of us. The kids are well-behaved, the wife is agreeable - and we even have some money!" -- traditional Jewish joke

http://reactionwheel.net/2019/01/schumpeter-on-strategy.html Nice post summarizing a bunch of concepts that we probably all know about, but I find it useful to refresh the basics over and over (if you don't, feel free to skip). Via Patrick O'Shaughnessy.

They certainly have a stronger network moat than other unicorns like Uber, since they have a global network and Uber has local clusters (when you're in city X, you don't care how many drivers they have in other cities, but when you're traveling, you could go anywhere so they need global inventory, and any competitor who wants to compete also needs global inventory).

He probably did more for most regular investors than anyone else. Sad news. Financial history will remember him for a long time.

The situation with these red notices is crazy...

Congrats, that sounds like an honest self-assessment, which is actually a very important skill to have as an investor (necessary though not sufficient). This line of work certainly isn't for everyone, like many other technical and stressful jobs (any surgeons in the house?). What kind of other things are you looking at? Completely different, or similar occupations? Good luck (and hard work) in whatever you do next.

There's a big difference between anonymous and pseudonymous. If you keep the same alias for years, people get to know you just as much as if you were using a "real name". A lot of the best accounts here and on Twitter are pseudonymous, but we know who they are because we've been following them for years, even if we don't know their real names.