Links

"It's one thing to have an opinion, and something very different to act as if it's right." --Howard Marks

The CFA Institute's Virtual Conference [Howard Marks, Peter Zeihan, and others] (LINK)

Platforms in an Aggregator World - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

All six parts of Matthew Ball's & Jacob Navok's primer on Epic Games (LINK)

The Rise of TikTok and Understanding Its Parent Company, ByteDance (LINK)

What Is Clubhouse, and Why Does Silicon Valley Care? (LINK)

The 'Don't Worry, Make Money' Strategy Trouncing The Stock Market By 30 Percentage Points (LINK)

Mortgage Credit Tightens, Creating Drag on Any Economic Recovery ($) (LINK)

Could the Pandemic of 2020 Redefine “Enough”? - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

Can Remote Work Be Fixed? - by Cal Newport (LINK)

Chapter 1 of Matt Ridley's new book, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom (LINK)

Ian Cassel Talks MicroCaps and 100-Baggers on the Chain Reaction Podcast (LINK)

Rob Arnott on WealthTrack (video) (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Shishir Mehrotra – The Art and Science of the Bundle (LINK)

The Talk Show With John Gruber (podcast): 285: ‘Fahrenheit Truthers’, With Ben Thompson (LINK)

Recode Decode Podcast: Brian Chesky: These 9 weeks were the most stressful in Airbnb’s history (LINK)

Acquired Podcast: SpaceX (LINK)

Masters in Business Podcast: Michael Lewis on the Power of Intelligent Leadership (LINK)

Against the Rules with Michael Lewis (podcast): The Coach Effect (LINK)

Tail risk of contagious diseases: a conversation between Nassim Taleb and Pasquale Cirillo (video) (LINK)

Freakonomics Radio (podcast): 419. 68 Ways to Be Better at Life [with Kevin Kelly] (LINK)

Links

“Instead of a discussion of risk (which is both predictive and sissy) I advocate the notion of fragility, which is not predictive—and, unlike risk, has an interesting word that can describe its functional opposite, the nonsissy concept of antifragility.” --Nassim Taleb (Antifragile)

The Acquirers Podcast: Tulip Mania: Chris Bloomstran on Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway (LINK)

Related previous post: Semper Augustus Investments Group: 2019 Annual Letter

Oaktree’s Howard Marks Says Fed Support Isn’t Forever, Distress Coming (video) (LINK)

Apollo Asia Fund: the manager's report for 1Q20 (LINK)

When Failure Is an Option: A Trading Strategy Soaks Investors - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

To Hedge or Not to Hedge - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

Media, Regulators, and Big Tech; Indulgences and Injunctions; Better Approaches - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Exponent Podcast: 185 — Open, Free, and Spotify (LINK)

Strategy under uncertainty - by Jerry Neumann (LINK)

Covid-19: Big shifts in the entertainment industry - by Sangeet Paul Choudary (LINK)

Innovation Can’t Be Forced, but It Can Be Quashed - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

Related book (released tomorrow): How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom

Fed Chair Jerome Powell on "60 Minutes" (video) (LINK)

The Pomp Podcast: 294: Cullen Roche Explains The Ultimate Breakdown Of The Federal Reserve (LINK)

Hidden Forces Podcast: How the Wealth Gap Drives Imbalances in Global Trade & Finance | Michael Pettis (LINK)

The Grant Williams Podcast: Super Terrific Happy Hour Ep. 2 - Inflation/Deflation (LINK)

The Daily Stoic Podcast: Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Historian Andrew Roberts Talk Leadership, Character and How One Person Can Change The World (LINK)

Recode Decode Podcast: Jon Meacham: America’s history can teach us how to hope for our future (LINK)

The Twilight of the Iranian Revolution - by Dexter Filkins (LINK)

Some Zoos, and Some of Their Animals, May Not Survive the Pandemic (LINK)

What's Different About the Coronavirus in Kids - by Sarah Zhang (LINK)

Mental Models For a Pandemic (LINK)

A review of The Great Mental Models, Volume 2 (LINK)

Links

"Unfortunately in this kind of work, where you are trying to determine relationships based upon past behavior, the almost invariable experience is that by the time you have had a long enough period to give you sufficient confidence in your form of measurement, just then new conditions supersede and the measurement is no longer dependable for the future." --Benjamin Graham ("Securities In An Insecure World")

Bill Gates on coronavirus: ‘It’s going to be a while before things go back to normal’ (video) (LINK)

Related article: The first modern pandemic - by Bill Gates

Horizon Kinetics Q1 Letter (LINK) [Audio review available HERE.]

Thoughts on Berkshire’s Deployable Cash (LINK)

A Historic Opportunity in Small Cap Stocks (LINK)

‘The American Tailwind’ - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

Paul Singer's April letter to Elliott investors (LINK)

Raoul Pal's April Global Macro Investor newsletter is now available for all to read (LINK)

Understanding Money, Credit, and Debt - by Ray Dalio (LINK)

BIS paper: Insurance regulatory measures in response to Covid-19 (LINK)

My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore? (LINK)

With 100,000 stores set to close by 2025, mall owners face this legal hurdle next (co-tenancy clauses) (LINK)

A Shift in Investment Strategies Post-Coronavirus — COVID-19 Virtual Roundtable (video) (LINK)

Recode Media Podcast: Matthew Ball on how the pandemic will remake TV, movies and video games (LINK)

MacroVoices Podcast: #216 David Rosenberg: Stagflation is coming but not yet (LINK)

How I Built This with Guy Raz (podcast): How I Built Resilience: Live With Guy and Simon Sinek (LINK)

Conversations with Tyler (podcast): Philip E. Tetlock on Forecasting and Foraging as a Fox (LINK)

Infinite Loops Podcast: Morgan Housel – The Psychology of Money (LINK)

Related book: The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness

Links

"He who moves not forward, goes backward." --Goethe

IT'S TIME TO BUILD - by Marc Andreessen (LINK)

Dispersion and Alpha Conversion: How Dispersion Creates the Opportunity to Express Skill - by Michael J. Mauboussin & Dan Callahan (LINK)

Masters in Business Podcast: James Montier on Fear and Investment (LINK)

Renaissance's $10 Billion Medallion Fund Gains 24% Year to Date in Tumultuous Market ($) (LINK)

Airbnb Defied the Odds of Startup Success. How Will It Survive a Pandemic? ($) (LINK)

Calpers Unwound Hedges Just Before March’s Epic Stock Selloff ($) (LINK)

Case Study of Tidewater and The Capital Cycle by John Chew (LINK)

The Forgotten Man - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

The Day of Reckoning for Private Equity - by Ted Seides (LINK)

Bloomberg Invest Talks: A Conversation with Ray Dalio (video) (LINK)

Kyle Bass: US & China Fallout & Recovery from COVID 19; Hong Kong Looming Banking Crisis (video) (LINK)

Why Walking Matters—Now More Than Ever (LINK)

Radiolab Podcast: The Cataclysm Sentence (LINK)

One day in 1961, the famous physicist Richard Feynman stepped in front of a Caltech lecture hall and posed this question to a group of undergraduate students: “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence was passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?” Now, Feynman had an answer to his own question - a good one. But his question got the entire team at Radiolab wondering, what did his sentence leave out? So we posed Feynman’s cataclysm question to some of our favorite writers, artists, historians, futurists - all kinds of great thinkers. We asked them, “What’s the one sentence you would want to pass on to the next generation that would contain the most information in the fewest words?” What came back was an explosive collage of what it means to be alive right here and now, and what we want to say before we go.

Links

"I think it’s hugely a mistake to think only about your probable misfortunes. You should also think about what’s good about your situation." --Charlie Munger (2009)

We Can’t Prevent Market Panics. We Can Control How We React. - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

The Corona Crisis is Not a Black Swan: Nassim Nicholas Taleb (video) (LINK)

Viral Prohibition, Eminent Domain, and the Path Ahead - by Brent Beshore (LINK)

COVID Impacts [on media & entertainment businesses] - by Matthew Ball (LINK)

Unmasking Twitter - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Socializing Corporate Risk-taking: Moral hazard 2.0 - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

Absolute Return Letter, March 2020: The Economic Cost of Social Distancing (LINK)

The Oil Glut Is Getting Critical ($) (LINK)

Pressure Mounts on Insurance Companies to Pay Out for Coronavirus ($) (LINK)

Lawmakers and regulators are pressuring insurers to go beyond the legal language of policies to get cash to Americans amid the mounting cost of shutdowns from the coronavirus pandemic.

What happens to mortgage-investment firms will shed light on what may be in store for the rest of the market ($) (LINK)

The Acquirers Podcast: Long Term: Tweedy Browne (LINK)

Capital Allocators Podcast: Ben Inker – Value Investing at GMO (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: D.A. Wallach – Investing in Healthcare (LINK)

Political Economy Podcast: Ben Thompson: Big Tech monopoly, data privacy, and the rise of China (LINK)

Acquired Podcast: Adapting Episode 2: Sequoia’s Black Swan Memo (LINK)

As research progresses, the nature of our enemy is becoming ever clearer - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

Links

Keeping the Coronavirus from Infecting Health-Care Workers - by Atul Gawande (LINK)

Why the Coronavirus Has Been So Successful - by Ed Yong (LINK) [Yong also wrote a long-form article in 2018 that is worth reviewing, "The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?," in which he quotes Anthony Fauci, who is now a household name given his current role and efforts, as saying: “It’s like a chain—one weak link and the whole thing falls apart. You need no weak links.”]

How the Coronavirus Became an American Catastrophe (LINK)

This Is Your Brain on a Crashing Stock Market - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

Anatomy of Fear and Greed - by Frank Martin (LINK)

Data Update 6 for 2020: Profitability, Returns and the value of Growth - by Aswath Damodaran (LINK)

Data Update 7 for 2020: Debt Delusions and Reality - by Aswath Damodaran (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Brent Beshore – Update on Small Business and Private Equity (LINK)

Carolina Stories with Steve Vafier (podcast): 1: Josh Glover – Brilliance in the Basics (LINK)

Acquired Podcast: Adapting Episode 1: Canlis (LINK)

Stock Market Valuations - by Meb Faber (LINK)

The Meb Faber Show: #206 - Meb’s take on Investment Plans, Building and Maintaining Wealth, How Meb Invests, and Investing in the time of Corona (LINK)

Crude Contango… - by Harris Kupperman (LINK)

Harris Kupperman on Intelligent Investing in Crisis Mode | MOI Global (audio) (LINK)

The Peter Attia Drive (podcast): #99 - Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D.: Continuing the conversation on COVID-19 (LINK)

A vaccine for coronavirus isn't going to ride rapidly to our rescue - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

Five Good Questions Podcast: Matt Ridley - How Innovation Works (LINK)

Matt Ridley Discusses Health, Innovation, and Risk (podcast) (LINK)

Links

"GEICO to me is very much like Costco. And one of the reasons it’s succeeded is that they really feel a holy duty to have a wonderful product at a very low price. A lot of people talk that game, but very few have it just right down under the body and soul of the company. But GEICO does, and companies like that do tend to grind ahead over time.... It’s easy to talk the game, but living the game is something else. I mean, it’s against the human nature of many entrepreneurial people to try and get the price down and the service quality up all the time." --Charlie Munger (2014)

How to Hedge a Coronavirus ($) (LINK)

Universa, managed by Mark Spitznagel, a protégé of “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, managed a little over $4 billion in assets as of the end of 2018. Claude Bovet, founder of Lionscrest Capital and a long time investor in the fund, estimates that Universa’s tail risk hedging strategy, representing part of its capital, earned more than 1,000% in a matter of days.

Market Corrosion and the Catalyst of COVID-19 - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

How Are You Different? - by Ian Cassel (LINK)

Death, Taxes, and Three Other Inevitable Things - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Jeff Lawson – How to Build a Platform (LINK)

Venture Stories Podcast: Jerry Neumann on Technological Revolutions, Picking Winners, and VC Returns (LINK)

The Knowledge Project Podcast: #77 Mike Maples: Living in the Future (LINK)

Second Order Risk - by Kevin Kelly (LINK)

Coronavirus Is No 1918 Pandemic (LINK)

What’s the Difference Between Dark Matter and Dark Energy? (LINK)

Links

"The basic reason for the cyclicality in our world is the involvement of humans. Mechanical things can go in a straight line. Time moves ahead continuously. So can a machine when it’s adequately powered. But processes in fields like history and economics involve people, and when people are involved, the results are variable and cyclical." --Howard Marks ("The Most Important Thing")

Bond Funds Are Hotter Than Tesla - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

Dan Rasmussen - Five Investing Heresies (video, from last year) (LINK)

The Next Frontier in Storytelling Universes and the Never Ending Desire for More - by Matthew Ball (LINK)

The concentration of economic power has led to spectacular investment returns (LINK)

Technocracy: Will What We Love Ruin Us? - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

History is Only Interesting Because Nothing is Inevitable - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Grant’s Current Yield Podcast: Impossible is extinct (LINK)

The Disruptive Voice Podcast: Micromobility and The Future of Transportation: A Conversation with Horace Dediu (LINK)

"Shall I tell you now, in a word, the sum of human duty? Patience, where we are to suffer; and prudence in things we do." --Seneca

Links

"People underrate the importance of a few simple big ideas. And I think that to the extent Berkshire Hathaway is a didactic enterprise teaching the right systems of thought, I think that the chief lessons are that a few big ideas really work, as I think these filters of ours have worked pretty well. Because they’re so simple." --Charlie Munger (1997)

"We have a bunch of filters we’ve developed in our minds over time. We don’t say they’re perfect filters. We don’t say that those filters don’t occasionally leave things out that should get through. But they’re efficient.... I think most of the people in this room, if they just focused on what made a good business or didn’t make a good business and thought about it a little while, they could develop a set of filters that would let them, in five minutes, figure out pretty well what made sense or didn’t make sense." --Warren Buffett (1997)

Warren Buffett Is Giving Up on Newspapers ($) (LINK)

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is selling its newspapers to publisher Lee Enterprises Inc. for $140 million, a rare admission by the billionaire investor that he views his newspaper business as unsustainable. 

Mr. Buffett, a lifelong newspaper lover, has said for years that Berkshire’s newspaper business declined faster than he expected. In mid-2018, Berkshire hired Lee to manage all of its newspapers except the Buffalo News. 

The sale announced Wednesday includes the Buffalo News along with the dozens of newspapers that Lee already manages for Berkshire, Lee said.

Martin Capital Management 2019 Annual Report (LINK)

High-Yield Was Oxy. Private Credit Is Fentanyl. (LINK)

The Tragic iPad - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Different Kinds of Easy - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Venture Stories Podcast: What Silicon Valley Doesn’t Get About Private Equity with Brent Beshore (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Chetan Puttagunta – Go Slow to Go Fast: Software Building and Investing (LINK)

a16z Podcast: The Truth about 1000 True Fans + the Price of Our Attention (LINK)

Acquired Podcast: WhatsApp (LINK)

Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson (podcast): Meat: Breaking a 2.5 Million Year Old Habit (LINK)

WEF2020: A Conversation with Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore (LINK)

The Deceptively Simple Number Sparking Coronavirus Fears - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"Many people believe that investors must make the macro decision to be either bullish or bearish. Our preference is to be agnostic, objectively finding absolute bargains, and in their absence, holding cash. In short, we are neither bullish nor bearish. We are value-ish." --Seth Klarman

Peter Lynch: How to Find Growth Opportunities in Today’s Stock Market (LINK) ["My best stocks have been ones where I didn’t have to worry about the big picture."]

Fidelity’s Peter Lynch: Do your research, don’t ‘play’ the market (video) [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Value Investing with Legends Podcast: Bruce Greenwald - Staying on the Right Side of the Trade (LINK)

Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman (podcast): Bill Gates — The biggest success story you haven’t heard (LINK)

Fall 2019 Exhibit | Finding the Edge: The Work and Insights of Edward O. Thorp (video) (LINK)

Druckenmiller on 2020 Outlook, Monetary Policy, U.S. Election (video) (LINK)

All Asset All Access – Insights from Research Affiliates (LINK)

Could It Be That a Minsky “Moment” Lurks in the Shadows? - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

11 Lessons from the Success of Disney+ - by Matthew Ball (LINK)

SoftBank Vision Fund Employees Depict a Culture of Recklessness (LINK)

Key Countries Aren’t Ready for Historic Ship-Fuel Switch (LINK)

The Market Huddle Podcast: Christmas with Kuppy (LINK)

Acquired Podcast: Convoy (with CEO Dan Lewis) (LINK)

The Disruptive Voice Podcast: Choosing College: Bob Moesta and Michael Horn on Why We Hire Education (LINK)

Doctors Prescribe More of a Drug If They Receive Money from a Pharma Company Tied to It (LINK)

Farnam Street’s 2019 Annual Letter to Readers (LINK)

The Infinite Game - by Blas Moros (LINK)

I wrote an essay I wish I had been given when I graduated from college, retired from tennis, and began the transition from student-athlete to the “real world.” 

Through this essay, I hope to provide some awareness and tools, namely around self-reflection and self-awareness, how to think about how to spend your time, what to look for in a job, and the importance of coaches and mentors. 

While written through the lens of a student-athlete, hopefully some of these principles and tools apply to a broader audience.

Links

"It’s not any goal of ours to double the revenues or increase them 20 percent, even, or anything. We just try to do whatever comes along that makes sense. And if there’s a lot that comes along in one year that makes sense, we’ll do a lot. And if there’s nothing that comes along that makes sense, we’ll do nothing. So there’s a lot of accident in it." --Warren Buffett (1996)

Warren Buffett's latest attempt to put his cash to work is thwarted (LINK)

Chris Bloomstran of Semper Augustus Investments Group doesn't like the price being offered by Kyocera for the rest of AVX. He posted some thoughts and his letter to the CEO and Special Committee on Twitter, which you can also find HERE.

Mohnish Pabrai's Annual Talk at Boston College (video) (LINK)

Josh Wolfe's Lux 2019 Annual Meeting Talk (video) (LINK)

Paul Tudor Jones and Ray Dalio at the Greenwich Economic Forum earlier this month (video) [H/T Linc] (LINK)

The Greatest Value Investor You’ve Never Heard (LINK)

Risky Business - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

The Complete Guide To Drilling (LINK)

Value Investing with Legends Podcast: Matthew McLennan - The Power of Selectivity and Patience (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Gavin Baker – Tech and Consumer Growth Investing (LINK)

Value: After Hours Podcast: Taylor, Brewster and Carlisle discuss Rentec, Chanos, and value (LINK)

Conversations with Tyler (podcast): Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen on the Nature and Causes of Progress (LINK)

The Tim Ferriss Show (podcast): #398: Peter Attia, M.D. — Fasting, Metformin, Athletic Performance, and More (LINK)

The Beirut Banyan Podcast: 81: Nassim Nicholas Taleb & Local Solutions for Lebanon (LINK)

Origin Stories Podcast: 40: The Denisovans (LINK)

Links

"I would say that I like a certain amount of social intervention that takes some of the inequality out of results in capitalism. But I hate, with a passion, rewarding anything that can be easily faked. Because I think then people lie, and lying works, and the lying spreads. And I think your whole civilization deteriorates." --Charlie Munger (1996)

Sam Zell on Bloomberg TV discussing buying distressed oil assets, discussing WeWork, and discussing why he's not investing in Hong Kong.

Past as Prologue - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

The Case Against Boeing (LINK)

Stephen Schwarzman on The David Rubenstein Show (video) (LINK)

Related book: What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence

Planet MicroCap Podcast: 100 - Investing: It’s All About the Journey with Ian Cassel (LINK)

The Joe Rogan Experience (podcast): #1383 - Malcolm Gladwell (LINK)

Related book: Talking to Strangers

The Tim Ferriss Show (podcast): #395: Jocko Willink Takeover — On Quitting, Relationships, Financial Discipline, Contrast Baths, and More (LINK)

Links

The Internet and the Third Estate - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

25th Anniversary of Financial Shenanigans with Howard Schilit - Author Series: Financial Reporting & Analysis Edition (May 2018 video) [H/T @colemanrhawkins] (LINK)

Related book: Financial Shenanigans

Greenhaven Road Capital's Q3 Letter [H/T @mastersinvest] (LINK)

Massif Capital Q3 Letter (LINK)

Patience: An Undervalued Virtue - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

The Acquirers Podcast: Joseph Boskovich talks with Tobias Carlisle about finding great owner/operators (LINK)

Grant’s Current Yield Podcast: Time to make the Donuts (LINK)

North Star Podcast: Ryan Holiday: Timeless Lessons From History (LINK)

Related book: Stillness Is the Key

A Textbook Evolutionary Story Is Wrong - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"The inflow of money and outflow of money should not be, in our view, attempted to be matched too carefully in this world, because you get investment and business opportunities at times that differ from the times that funds come in. And one of the most important disciplines in running a business or managing investments is to not try to coordinate your actions simply with the availability of cash." --Warren Buffett (1996)

Channels: The Business of Communications periodical, dated November 1986 (Warren Buffett cover) [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Three Big Things: The Most Important Forces Shaping the World - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

How a Public Narrative Can Move Markets - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

Why Ken Fisher Advertises So Much (LINK)

The Map and the Terrain - by Ben Horowitz (LINK)

Exponent Podcast: 174 — Distracted at Facebook (LINK)

The Ezra Klein Show (podcast): Malcolm Gladwell’s Stranger Things (LINK)

Related book: Talking to Strangers

The Tim Ferriss Show (podcast): #389: Neil deGrasse Tyson — How to Dream Big, Think Scientifically, and Get More Done (LINK)

HBR IdeaCast: 703: Melinda Gates on Fighting for Gender Equality (LINK)

Value Investing with Legends Podcast: Jenny Wallace - Identifying Value at the Summit (LINK)

Mars sounds weird - by Phil Plait (LINK)

Links

How a stealthy insurance tech startup bootstrapped its way to a $2.35B acquisition in less than 4 years [H/T @BrentBeshore] (LINK)

FRMO Corp. - 2019 Shareholder Letter [H/T @colemanrhawkins] (LINK)

How to Factor Fickle Markets Into Your Portfolio - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

Immutable Truths and Arguing Fools - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Mohnish Pabrai on The Dhandho Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns (video) (LINK)

Of Ben Graham, Investing, and Eternity (LINK)

Only the Shadow Knows - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

Joe Nocera's 2002 story on T. Boone Pickens (LINK)

International conflict isn't declining, new analysis finds (LINK)

Grant’s Current Yield Podcast: A conversation with the Dean of High Yield (LINK)

The Tim Ferriss Show (podcast): #386: Ken Burns (LINK)

The Game That Made Rats Jump for Joy - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Scientists taught rats to play hide-and-seek in order to study natural animal behavior—but it was also fun, for both the researchers and the animals.

Links

“Busts are the product of booms, and I’m convinced it’s usually more correct to attribute a bust to the excesses of the preceding boom than to the specific event that sets off the correction. But most of the time there is a spark that starts the swing from bullish to bearish.” --Howard Marks (“Now What?,” January 2008)

Pershing Square's reason for buying shares in Berkshire Hathaway [pages 10-12 of report] (LINK)

John Hempton on the Markopolis GE paper (Post 1, Post 2)

Why Viacom Fell (And Why It Can Come Back) (LINK)

Pushing on a String - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

WeWork IPO Shows It’s the Most Magical Unicorn (LINK)

Everything about the company is over-the-top: its growth, losses, potential conflicts of interest and financial gymnastics.

What is We!? Understanding the WeWork IPO - by Byrne Hobart [H/T @BrentBeshore] (LINK)

The Disruptive Voice Podcast: A Jobs-To-Be-Done Masterclass with Andrew Glaser and Bob Moesta (LINK)

Revisionist History Podcast: Chutzpah vs. Chutzpah (LINK)

A Tissue Sample From 1966 Held Traces of Early HIV - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

Advantage Flywheels - by Max Olson (LINK)

Where Did This ‘Bull Market’ Come From, Anyway? - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

Buffett Steers Clear of Buying Stocks; Berkshire’s Cash Pile Hits a Record (LINK)

Bill Murray and Warren Buffett spotted at Ted and Wally's in downtown Omaha (LINK)

Good for Google, Bad for America - by Peter Thiel (LINK)

The latest Ken Henry blow-up - by John Hempton (LINK)

The Tides Trump the Waves - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

Focused Compounding Podcast: 103. Ian Cassel and The Power of Capacity Constrained Investing Strategies (LINK)

Techmeme Ride Home Podcast: The State of Amazon With Jason Del Rey (LINK)

The Rank Hypocrisy of Trump’s Ebola Tweets - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Incredible, must-see video: 'The Comet,' a film noir view of 67P (LINK)

Links

"The biggest thing, too, is to have something in the way you’re programmed so that you don’t ever do anything where you can lose a lot. I mean, our best ideas have not been better than other people’s best ideas, but we’ve never had a lot of things that pulled us way back. So we never went two steps forward and one step back. We probably went two steps forward and a fraction of a step back. But avoiding the catastrophes is a very important thing, and it will be important in the future." --Warren Buffett (2007)

The Agony of Hope Postponed, by a Value Investor (LINK)

Why 1925? - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

Bill Nygren Market Commentary | 2Q19 (LINK)

Notes from Peter Thiel’s speech at the National Conservatism conference on July 14, 2019 [H/T @tylercowen] (LINK)

The Long View Podcast: James Montier: ‘How Do I Get Paid for Owning This Asset?’ [H/T Ritholtz] (LINK)

EdSurge On Air Podcast: Sal Khan: Test Prep Is ’the Last Thing We Want to Be’ (LINK)

A great summary of Matthew Walker's key ideas on sleep via excerpts from his podcast chat with Peter Attia (LINK)

Not freezing yourself out...

Here's a reply from Buffett and Munger at the 2007 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting—to a question posed by Frank Martin (Question 24)—that I thought was worth posting separately here. Going back and (slowly) reading the transcripts with the benefit of hindsight has been a fantastic learning experience, and this excerpt is a great example. All three of them clearly saw trouble ahead given the excesses that existed. And given that belief—and the belief that timing the downturn and its magnitude with precision was nearly impossible—Buffett and Munger gave this advice about how to act: 

WARREN BUFFETT: ...We don’t have the faintest idea where the S&P will be in three years, or where the long-term bond will be in three years, but we do know which we would rather own on a 20-year basis. 

CHARLIE MUNGER: Warren, we’d also expect that the current scene will cause some real disruption, not too many years ahead. 

WARREN BUFFETT: That’s true, but if you go back a hundred years, you could almost say that in almost any period. You will get disruptions from time to time, and it’s very nice if you have a lot of cash then and you have the guts to do something with it.  

But predicting them or waiting around for them, that sort of thing, is not our game. And I mean, we bought $5 billion worth of equities in the first quarter, something like that. 

And...it would be a joke to even compare them to 1974 or a whole bunch of other periods. But we decided we would rather have them than cash, or we would rather have them than sit around and hope that things get a lot cheaper. 

We don’t spend a lot of time doing that. You can freeze yourself out indefinitely.  

So any time we find something that we think is intelligent to do, we just do it, and we hope we can do it big.

Links

For those looking for Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting links, see the post from earlier today.

Ian Cassel's initial investor letter for Intelligent Fanatics Capital Management (LINK)

Howard Buffett Looks Beyond an Oracle for Advice ($) (LINK)

Buffett And Inverse Emotionalism - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

CNBC's full interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook (LINK)

The Investors Podcast: Value Investing w/ Mohnish Pabrai (LINK)

The making of Amazon Prime, the internet’s most successful and devastating membership program (LINK)

Can anyone tame the next internet? - by Kara Swisher (LINK)

Forces have been unleashed that seem out of control. But is it the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?

a16z FinTech Newsletter: April 2019 (LINK)

Bank On It Podcast: John Buttrick from Union Square Ventures (LINK)

Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson (podcast) -- Insurance: Who’s Looking Out For You? (LINK)

The School of Greatness Podcast -- Mark Manson: What People Don’t Tell You about Success (LINK)

Related book: Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope

Renaissance Paragone: An Ancient Tactic for Getting the Most From People (LINK)

The Giant Panda Is a Closet Carnivore - by Ed Yong (LINK)

AI Evolved These Creepy Images to Please a Monkey’s Brain - by Ed Yong (LINK)

For Audible Members, the current sale is 50-70% off all titles, so it's probably worth going through your wish list. A couple on my list that I noticed fell in the 70% off category were AI Superpowers and The Fifth Risk.