Money and Finance

Links

The BIS Annual Report (LINK)

Steve Keen: "If you want to understand Greece today, read Wynne Godley from 1992." (LINK)

The Bruce Greenwald Method [H/T @mjmauboussin] (LINK)

Steven Romick’s Speech To CFA Society Of Chicago [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK)

We will therefore continue to focus our energies on the search for great businesses at good prices or decent businesses at great prices. We try and keep it simple. I confess that I didn’t always operate this way. In my early years, I ended up too much in the weeds. I had to know everything about a company and its industry. I’ve since learned that knowing less is okay as long as you have identified the one to three things that will drive the company. We believe exactness offers little so we prefer to establish a potential range of outcomes instead. We’d rather be directionally right rather than precisely wrong.

We spend a lot of time asking such questions as: “How does the business work?” “Why does this opportunity exist?” And then, “What if?” Knowing that successful investing is as much about finding winners as it is about avoiding losers, we invert a favorable thesis so as to see it through less rose-colored lenses, all of which hopefully limits negative surprises.

...

Stocks ask you different questions at different prices. One needs fewer answers at a low price versus a high price. For example, a container ship company priced as if its vessels are worth just scrap value requires only a couple of questions like, “How much cash might be burned before the market rebounds?” and “Can its balance sheet support that?” Whereas if you bought that same container ship company with good current cash flow but day rates are at highs and its stock is trading at two times book value, you’d be far more dependent on the sustainability of the day rate. You’d then have to ask whether or not the management team would spend their free cash flow wisely. In the first case, you’d worry less about their capital allocation decisions because they’d be lacking free cash flow and financial flexibility.

Scott Adams: How Do You Avoid Email? (LINK)

TED Talk - Chris Urmson: How a driverless car sees the road (LINK)

Brad Feld speaks at Big Omaha 2015 (video) (LINK)

Sam Harris and Dan Carlin in podcast discussing American interventionism, the war on terror, and related topics (LINK) [And on a related-to-podcasts note, thanks to Max for telling me about the Overcast app, which is great for listening to podcasts.]

Matt Ridley: Invasive species are the greatest cause of extinction (LINK)

Cephalopod Week Wrap-Up (LINK)

Book of the day [H/T @dccommonsense]: The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

- Links
Education & Elon Musk’s School Startup (LINK) CCTV Interview with Howard Marks (video) [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK) A Conversation with Steven Romick and David Herro (from earlier this summer) [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK) Inside These Hedge Funds, Special...

- Links
Presentations from The Ben Graham Centre’s 2015 Value Investing Conference [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK) Nestle chairman: Heinz owners have 'pulverized' the food industry [H/T Matt] (LINK) The Apollo Asia Fund's Q1 Report (LINK) Horizon...

- Links
Bud Labitan made his book Moats free for all (LINK) Read the letter Bill Gates sent to Microsoft employees for the company's 40th anniversary (LINK) Life after Pimco: Mohamed El-Erian on economics, politics and his hope for a 'Sputnik moment'...

- Preparing For The Next Bear Market
The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. - Sun TzuEarlier this week, a friend asked me what I thought could end this bull market. I searched...

- The Best Investor You've (probably) Never Heard Of
Earlier this month, I came across a great interview with one of my favorite investors, Chuck Akre of Akre Focus (disclosure: I own shares of his fund) -- thanks to Kevin Holloway (@kevin_holloway on Twitter) for pointing it out. I've followed Akre...

Money and Finance