Links

"As I've gotten older...I could not help but notice the effect on people of the stories they told about themselves. If you listen to people—if you just sit and listen—you'll find that there are patterns in the way they talk about themselves. There's the kind of person who's always the victim in any story that they tell—always on the receiving end of some injustice. There's the person who's always kind of the hero in every story they tell. The smart person—they deliver the clever put-down. There are lots of versions of this. And you gotta be very careful about how you tell these stories because it starts to become you. You are, in the way you craft your narrative, kind of crafting your character. And so, I did at some point decide: I am going to adopt self-consciously as my narrative that I'm the happiest person anybody knows. And it is amazing how happy-inducing it is." --Michael Lewis [Source]

The Tim Ferriss Show (podcast): #427: Michael Lewis on the Crafts of Writing, Friendship, Coaching, Happiness, and More (LINK)

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting Transcript 2020 (LINK)

The Investor’s Podcast: TIP295: Mohnish Pabrai on Value Investing & Philanthropy (LINK)

Masters in Business Podcast: Jim Chanos on Financial Fraud (LINK)

Finding Your Balance in a Topsy-Turvy Market - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

Beyond coronavirus: The road ahead for the automotive aftermarke [H/T @chrispavese] (LINK)

How Greenwich Republicans Learned to Love Trump - by Evan Osnos (LINK)

The iconic brands that could disappear because of coronavirus (LINK)

Price Gouging Could Actually Fix Our Face Mask Shortage - by Russ Roberts (LINK)

Old Drugs May Find a New Purpose: Fighting the Coronavirus (LINK)

Why Weren’t We Ready for the Coronavirus? - by David Quammen (LINK)

Making Sense with Sam Harris (podcast): #201 [with Yuval Noah Harari] (LINK)

Hope, Through History Podcast: Episode 1 | FDR and The Great Depression (LINK)

Hope, Through History Podcast: Episode 2 | Winston Churchill and World War II (LINK)

The Man Who Thought Too Fast (LINK)

Book of the day (recommended by Michael Lewis): The Long Ships

Links

"We pay some very big money. We have managers that have made and will make in the tens of millions annually, and we have managers that, when we suffer, they suffer. But you’ve got to treat people fairly. Even though they don’t need the money, everybody wants to be treated fairly. And so the rationale for how you’re doing it should be understood, but there is no cross-Berkshire rationale at all.... The main thing to do is, in terms of market position and all that sort of thing, the real thing I really want to pay managers for is widening the moat that separates our business from our competitors’ businesses over time. Now, that gets very subjective, so I don’t have any perfect way of doing that. But that is always going through my mind in trying to design compensation systems." --Warren Buffett (2010)

Warren Buffett will soon tell us what he really thinks about stocks investing and the coronavirus pandemic - by Lawrence Cunningham (LINK)

The Anti-Amazon Alliance - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

When You Have No Idea What Happens Next - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Wizards of Dalal Street: Mohnish Pabrai on COVID-19 and world economy (video) (LINK)

Martin Stopford on "Coronavirus, Climate Change & Smart Shipping: 3 Maritime Scenarios 2020-2050” (video) (LINK) [Related paper HERE.]

State of the Cloud 2020 · Bessemer Venture Partners (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Josh Kopelman - The Past, Present, And Future Of Seed Investing (LINK)

Stoicism in a time of pandemic: how Marcus Aurelius can help (LINK)

The Ezra Klein Show (podcast): Bill Gates’s vision for life beyond coronavirus (LINK)

Antibody Tests Won’t Get Us Back to Normal - by Sarah Zhang (LINK)

Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing - by Ed Yong (LINK)

A guide to making sense of a problem that is now too big for any one person to fully comprehend

Links

Charlie Munger: ‘The Phone Is Not Ringing Off the Hook’ (LINK)

"The Practice of Value Investing" by Li Lu (November 2019 speech, translated) (LINK)

Has This California Lab Fixed America’s Covid Test Problem? - by Michael Lewis (LINK)

Who Pays For This? - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Rob Arnott: Why the Stock Market Hasn't Even Gotten Cheap Yet (video) (LINK)

The NBA and Microsoft - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Mohnish Pabrai and Francis Chou Q&A with Harvard class (podcast) (LINK)

Value Investing with Legends Podcast: Dan Davidowits & Jeff Mueller – Compounding with Polen Capital (LINK)

MacroVoices Podcast #215 - Chris Cole: Dragon portfolio revisited in the eye of the storm (LINK)

Related paper: "The Allegory of the Hawk and the Serpent"

The Peter Attia Drive Podcast: #107 - John Barry: 1918 Spanish flu pandemic—historical account, parallels to today, and lessons (LINK)

Related book: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

Links

A Primer on Reading Annual Reports [H/T @CrowdedTradeCap] (LINK)

Bob Iger Thought He Was Leaving on Top. Now, He’s Fighting for Disney’s Life. (LINK)

Steve Bregman on Debt Debasement (audio) (LINK)

Mohnish Pabrai: A Bull's View in a Virus Shop (LINK)

Paul Black Investor Update March 2020 (video) [H/T @mastersinvest] (LINK)

Learning from Charles Schwab (LINK)

Federal Reserve has encouraged moral hazard on a grand scale - by Jonathan Tepper ($) (LINK)

Value Hive Podcast: 20: Survival of The Permanent w/ Brent Beshore, Permanent Equity (LINK)

Venture Stories Podcast: Nir Eyal on His New Book, “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life” (LINK)

The Great Influenza of 1918 (LINK)

Related book: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Key to Innovation (LINK)

How Anthony Fauci Became America’s Doctor (LINK)

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

"If you can protect downside, you don't need to figure out upside. In fact, those will give you the best upside because markets hate them till the upside is clearly visible." --Mohnish Pabrai

How did Mohnish Pabrai inspire Guy Spier? An interview in the Aquamarine Fund's office in Zurich (video) [H/T @mstafford] (LINK)

Satya Nadella at Stanford (video) (LINK)

Oaktree Insights: Emerging Markets Equities Strategy Video (LINK)

Useful Biases - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Netflix Versus Blockbuster (LINK)

Neumann to Get Up to $1.7 Billion to Exit WeWork as SoftBank Takes Control ($) (LINK)

Death and Deals: Sick Children Suffer, Private Equity Profits (LINK)

The Joe Rogan Experience (podcast): #1366 - Richard Dawkins (LINK)

Links

"Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it." --Benjamin Franklin

Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan (LINK)

Fall 2019 issue of Graham & Doddsville (LINK)

The Heilbrunn Center's Schloss Archive is also worth going back and checking out periodically (LINK)

The Knowledge Project Podcast: #68 Daniel Kahneman: Putting Your Intuition on Ice (LINK)

Exponent Podcast: 175 — The Abyss Stares Back (LINK)

The Next Big Idea Podcast: Malcolm Gladwell and David Epstein on the Keys to Success (LINK)

Related book: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

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

"More money is made by thinking than is ever made by buying and selling." --Adrian Cantwell (via Asia's Investment Prophets)

Mohnish Pabrai’s Lecture and Q&A with students of Peking University (Guanghua School of Mgmt.): “Great Businesses vs. Great Investments” (video) (LINK)

Mohnish Pabrai's Webcast Q&A Session with Students at London Business School (video) (LINK)

What Yogi Berra Would Have Said About This Bull Market - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

GE’s Larry Culp Faces Ultimate CEO Test in Trying to Save a Once-Great Company (LINK)

James Grant: The Fed will cut in June (video) (LINK)

Choosing the Wrong Lane in the Race to 5G (LINK)

A Few Thoughts On Public Speaking - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

What Really Happened to Malaysia’s Missing Airplane - by William Langewiesche (LINK)

32 Thoughts From a 32-Year-Old - by Ryan Holiday (LINK)

EconTalk Podcast: Anja Shortland on Kidnap (LINK)

Related book: Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business

The Peter Attia Drive Podcast: #58 – AMA with sleep expert, Matthew Walker, Ph.D. (LINK)

Book of the day [H/T Claire Barnes]: The Purpose of Capital

Links

"Any asset class that has a big move, that’s based initially on fundamentals, is going to attract speculative participation at some point, and that speculative participation can become dominant as time goes by.... How far it goes, you never know. Some things go on to just unbelievable heights." --Warren Buffett (2006) 

Li Lu: Discussions about Modernization – Part Two: A Look at the Future of Sino-US Relations (December 2018) [H/T Linc] (LINK) [Part 1 was HERE.]

Mohnish Pabrai speaks at Trinity College Dublin - February 21, 2019 (video) (LINK)

Salesforce’s Success Rides on One Man’s Gut (LINK)

‘They Were Conned’: How Reckless Loans Devastated a Generation of Taxi Drivers (LINK)

Exponent Podcast: An Intra-west Debate (LINK)

The Wright Show: A Brief History of Doom (Robert Wright & Richard Vague) (LINK)

Related book: A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises

How China Sees Trump and the Rapidly Escalating Trade War (podcast) (LINK)

Evan Osnos joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the forces driving the first real economic and political test between the two superpowers of the twenty-first century. 

Five Good Questions: Barbara Tversky – Mind in Motion (LINK)

Beyond the Hype of Lab-Grown Diamonds [H/T Abnormal Returns] (LINK)

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.

Links

"Our double task is now to preserve and foster both biological evolution as Nature designed it and cultural evolution as we invented it, trying to achieve the benefits of both, and exercising a wise restraint to limit the damage when they come into conflict. With biological evolution, we should continue playing the risky game that nature taught us to play. With cultural evolution, we should use our unique gifts of language and art and science to understand each other, and finally achieve a human society that is manageable if not always peaceful, with wildlife that is endlessly creative if not always permanent." --Freeman Dyson

Biological and Cultural Evolution - An EDGE Original Essay by Freeman Dyson (LINK)

Mohnish Pabrai’s Q&A Session with JNV Kottayam Dakshana Scholars (video) (LINK)

An Evening with Ken Chenault (PBS video) [H/T Linc] (LINK)

The Greatest Investor You’ve Never Heard Of: An Optometrist Who Beat The Odds To Become A Billionaire (LINK) [Interesting article, but probably not the best title. Assuming the Forbes net worth estimate is about correct, and that losing $50 million in the early 80s margin call meant he had at least another $50 million in net worth, then the IRRs, especially considering the business income he was adding over time, are probably not worthy of the title "greatest investor" in the headline. But the lessons about buying and holding and buying what you know, especially in regards to Heico, are great.]

Graham & Doddsville: Winter 2019 (LINK)

Nobody Wants to Invest in Your Shit - by Meb Faber (LINK)

First Mover Alpha - by Ben Carlson (LINK)

The FT's articles on Wirecard are free to read online (LINK) [See also, from a year ago, Wirecard AG: The Great Indian Shareholder Robbery - by Roddy Boyd]

Your Guide to the Gold Rush of Digital Logistics (LINK)

Amazon and taxes: a simple primer (LINK)

The Distrust of Intellectual Authority (LINK)

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast: Raj Kapoor (Lyft) and John Viera (Ford Motor Company) - Mobilizing the Future (LINK)

The Tony Robbins Podcast: Timing is everything | Daniel Pink on the best time for meetings, taking breaks and creative breakthroughs (LINK)

Related book: When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum: EP7 Hardcore History On Fire (LINK)

Is the Insect Apocalypse Really Upon Us? - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Claims that insects will disappear within a century are absurd, but the reality isn’t reassuring either.

Book of the day [H/T @paulg]: Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950-1350

Links

"Human history is a fragment of biology. Man is one of countless millions of species and, like all the rest, is subject to the struggle for existence and the competition of the fittest to survive. All psychology, philosophy, statesmanship, and utopias must make their peace with these biological laws. Man can be traced to about a million years before Christ. Agriculture can be traced no farther back than to 25,000 B.C. Man has lived forty times longer as a hunter than as a tiller of the soil in a settled life. In those 975,000 years his basic nature was formed and remains to challenge civilization every day." --Will Durant, "Heroes of History"

How mobile phones are helping farmers grow bigger harvests - by Bill Gates (LINK)

How Google and Amazon Got So Big Without Being Regulated (LINK)

Related book: The Curse of Bigness

Record Biotech IPO May Be Worth the $7 Billion - by Charley Grant ($) (LINK)

Moderna is slated to offer the largest biotech IPO on record, and a $7 billion valuation isn’t as crazy as it sounds

Mohnish Pabrai's keynote speech at the 8th Morningstar Investment Conference in Mumbai, India (video) (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Cliff Asness – The Past, The Present & Future of Quant  (LINK)

Grant’s Current Yield Podcast: Curated content (LINK)

6 Biases Holding You Back From Rational Thinking - by Robert Greene (LINK)

Related book: The Laws of Human Nature

TED Talk: My journey to thank all the people responsible for my morning coffee | AJ Jacobs (LINK)

Released today: This Is Marketing - by Seth Godin (who also reads the audiobook)

Links

"Ben Franklin said, 'If you want to be miserable, you know, during Easter or something like that,' he says, 'borrow a lot of money to be repaid at Lent,' or something to that effect. And similarly, being short something, which keeps going up because somebody is promoting it in a half-crooked way, and you keep losing, and they call on you for more margin — it just isn’t worth it to have that much irritation in your life. It isn’t that hard to make money somewhere else with less irritation." --Charlie Munger

Bethany McLean talks with Hank Paulson and Chris Dodd about the financial crisis (video...starting at the 9:54 mark) (LINK)

Mohnish Pabrai's Interview with CNBC – TV18 on Investing Opportunities in India (video) (LINK)

The Pitfalls of Early Success – A Personal History (LINK)

Chip Conley: "Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder" | Talks at Google (LINK)

The Ezra Klein Show: Doris Kearns Goodwin (live!) on how great presidents are made (podcast) (LINK)

Related book: Leadership: In Turbulent Times

Famed short seller tells Dallas investors where they shouldn't put their money (LINK)

Jeffrey Gundlach interview with Citywire (Part 1, Part 2)

Jeffrey Gundlach: I don't read a lot of commentary. I think I learned the most from Richard Russell, who was a newsletter writer from 1958 and he did it continuously until a few years ago when he passed away in his late 80s. He had a lot of experience and a lot of ideas and methods and I learned a lot by reading those letters. I don't subscribe anymore. I think his children have taken over. But I really liked Richard Russell.  

And I read Jim Grant’s Interest Rate Observer. Every now and then there's an issue with a real gem of an idea. Sometimes there isn't, but very few publications ever have a true gem. He has them in there. 

I read the newswires more than anything else. What I'm looking for is these magical moments when the data doesn't change but the interpretation of it does. That's very interesting, because it tells you that something has shifted in terms of mood, or attitude, or emotion or sentiment. The opposite happens too, which is equally interesting. That is that the data does change but people don’t realize it and the narrative stays the same. And that happens a lot too. So I always look for things that used to be true that are no longer true, but people don't realize it yet. 

My biggest lesson that I've learned... I have the same flaw that every human being has and that is: As you're growing up and getting older, you believe that everybody's like you. You just extrapolate your personality traits and proclivities on other people. Then you start to realize increasingly, that that's not true. And I believed, therefore, that everybody was intellectually objective and honest and wanted to figure things out for themselves. And I didn't understand, for probably as long as 20 years, why I couldn't convince people of almost mathematically analytical arguments regarding markets. And it was finally after years of this that I realized that people actually want to be told what to think. 

It took me a long time to understand that. Not me, see, I don't want to be told what to think. And so I figured nobody wants to be told what to think. But indeed, I think almost everybody wants to be told what to think. That creates a tremendous advantage in managing money. Because in that window of time between a fact and people being told what the fact means, you have a window if you're capable of figuring out what it means - and don't need to be told what it means – where you can actually act before other people and I found I've made a lot of money that way. 

I remember when Ben Bernanke announced the Fed funds rate was going to stay at 0% for three years, and the markets didn't move. And I had my traders look for this asset class in the bond market that would be the primary beneficiary of rate staying at zero for three years. And I said, “How much of the prices up?” And they said, “They're not up at all.”

Links

"If you're going to do anything new or different in the world, it is going to be misunderstood. Sometimes by well-meaning critics. Sometimes by self-interested critics. You'll get all kinds. And it's okay. It's all part of the process. The only way to avoid criticism altogether is to be completely conventional in everything you do. So how do you respond the the criticism?... What's the right thing to do? Well, I think the first thing you do is you ask: Are the critics right? You listen. You ask are they right? Or even if they're not completely right, is there some piece of it that's right that you can be inspired by? And then if you decide, by the way, that the answer is no—that you believe you have conviction that what you're doing is the right course—then no force in the world should be able to move you. You should have a deep keel. But if you decide that there is something, then you should change." --Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos receives the Sammies Spirit of Service award, and then chats with Michael Lewis [H/T ValueWalk] (it starts with 27 minutes left in the livestream video) (LINK)

Mohnish Pabrai Lecture at Boston College: "The Ten Commandments of Investment Management" (video) (LINK)

James Grant and Jason Zweig on WealthTrack (video) (LINK)

Hedge Fund Billionaire Rode the Worst Trade of His Life All the Way Down [Lampert/Sears] (LINK)

Introduction and Chapter One of Jonathan Tepper's new book, The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition (LINK)

Stephen King’s 20 Rules for Writers (LINK)

What Manatees Do During Hurricane Season - by Ed Yong (LINK)

"Generally speaking, there’s more felicity to be gained...from reducing expectations than in any other way." --Charlie Munger

Links

"We generally believe you can just see anything in markets. I mean, it's just extraordinary what happens in markets over time. It gets sorted out eventually, but we have seen companies sell for tens of billion dollars that are worthless. And at times, we have seen things sell for...literally 20 percent or 25 percent of what they were worth. So we have seen and will continue to see everything. It’s just the nature of markets. They produce wild, wild things over time. And the trick is, occasionally, to take advantage of one of those wild things and not to get carried away when other wild things happen because the wild things create their own truth for a while." --Warren Buffett (2000)

Links to some old Ben Graham articles (via Twitter) [H/T @jasonzweigwsj] (LINK)

Mohnish Pabrai interview in The Economic Times (LINK)

The checklist that I created came out of looking at mistakes made by great investors. The single biggest reason why investments don’t work out for investors is leverage. The second biggest reason has to do with a misunderstanding of the comparative advantage of the moat. Then you get to management and ownership and other issues. You might get to environmental or unions and labour and that sort of things. The three really big things are — leverage, moats and management, probably in that order. 

More than money, Berkshire’s Todd Combs coming on Paytm board is the best outcome (LINK)

The Race of Our Lives Revisited (in a nutshell) - Jeremy Grantham (LINK)

In this abridged version of “The Race of Our Lives Revisited” Jeremy Grantham provides a detailed discussion of the long-term, slow-burning problems that threaten us today: climate change, population growth, increasing environmental toxicity.

Citron Research's short thesis on Wayfair (LINK)

Akimbo Podcast: Ignore sunk costs (LINK)

Radiolab Podcast: Baby Blue Blood Drive (LINK)

Does Our Cultural Obsession With Safety Spell the Downfall of Democracy? (LINK)

Fred Rogers: a quiet psychological revolution in children’s television (LINK)

Related book: The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers  

Related documentary: Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Links

"If we’d kept our earlier modes, if we’d never learned, we wouldn’t have done very well. The game of life is a game of everlasting learning. At least it is if you want to win." --Charlie Munger

The time/decision gap - by Seth Godin (LINK)

Mohnish Pabrai talk: "Trust vs. Truth" (LINK)

Auto industry legend CEO Sergio Marchionne dies at age 66 (LINK)

Alphabet may become the Berkshire Hathaway of the internet age on its massive technology bets [H/T Matt] (LINK)

Berkshire's Todd Combs Aided Buffett in Showdown Over USG Transaction [H/T Linc] (LINK) [Details in the SEC filing, HERE....search for 'Combs'.]

Venezuela's Inflation to Reach 1 Million Percent, IMF Forecasts (LINK)

The Knowledge Project Podcast: Shane Parrish chats with Annie Duke (LINK)

Related book: Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Bethany McLean – Business Gone Bad and the Art of Persistence (LINK)

Related book (September release): Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World

Bloomberg's Ashlee Vance has an interesting video series called "Hello World" worth checking out (LINK)

A dead star is eating its planets - by Phil Plait (LINK)

Is This Fungus Using a Virus To Control An Animal's Mind? - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Books of the day:

My Father's Business: The Small-Town Values That Built Dollar General into a Billion-Dollar Company

Free Radicals: The Secret Anarchy of Science [mentioned by Bethany McLean in the podcast above]

Links

Mohnish Pabrai's Advice For Value Investors (LINK)

One of the big issues investors face is preconceived perspectives.  When we look at a stock, what goes on in our brains when we encounter a company for the first time?  For the first 30, 60 seconds, or first couple minutes? That has a huge impact on our financial well being and how our portfolio does.  In the first few minutes, you’re making a decision on whether you’re going to take a pass at a company, or spend another 15 minutes. And at the end of that 15 minutes, you’re going to make another decision as to whether you’re going to take a pass or spend an hour or two, and so on.  No investor has enough time in the day, week or year, to look at anything more than a small handful of businesses in some depth. 

Even if I look at the United States with its 3500 some odd publicly traded businesses, an investment manager can really not drill down on more than a few dozen of them every year.  So they have to make a decision relatively quickly on which ones they are or are not going to focus on.  Commitment bias that comes in once we start spending time on something, our brains play games with us.  One of the games our brain plays is that we feel entitled. “Hey, if I spent some time on it, I ought to make money on it”. 

And that’s really not how investing works. I think it’s very important to be aware of commitment bias, and to be very aware that the first two or three minutes that when you’re looking at a company are when you have to make the call.  It’s okay to let a winner go, but more important not to let a loser stay.

The Nutella Billionaires: Inside The Ferrero Family’s Secret Empire (LINK)

Amazon to acquire online pharmacy PillPack in a deal that could disrupt the US drugstore business (LINK)

Jim Chanos and James Grant talk about fraud (video) [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK)

Sophisticated investors have been the victims of deception throughout our nation's history. Celebrated financial experts Jim Chanos and James Grant explore historical examples of businesses that became notorious after having been accused or convicted of defrauding their shareholders.

Moving the Needle on a Portfolio - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

Robert Greene on The Knowledge Project Podcast (LINK)

Talks at GS: Malcolm Gladwell on the Art of Storytelling – From Print to Podcasts (video) (LINK)

Revisionist History Podcast: Malcolm Gladwell's 12 Rules for Life (LINK)

Aspen Ideas Festival -- Jordan Peterson: From the Barricades of the Culture Wars (video) (LINK)

Aspen Ideas Festival -- Democracy Dies In Darkness: An Interview with The Washington Post's Martin Baron (video) (LINK)

Aspen Ideas Festival -- On the Road with Rise of the Rest (video) (LINK)

Entrepreneur Steve Case and "Hillbilly Elegy" author-turned-venture-capitalist J. D. Vance have taken their investment mission on a bus tour they’re calling “Rise of the Rest.” They are travelling around Middle America, identifying and rewarding entrepreneurs who exhibit the kinds of talent and ingenuity that many mistakenly believe only happens in Silicon Valley. What are they learning about the US innovation economy? Joining them in discussion is Katie Couric, who herself has been crisscrossing America to find out what makes us tick.

Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson (podcast): Timing the Market (LINK)

American Innovations Podcast: Nuclear Energy | Atoms For Peace | 3 (LINK)

The last couple of Crazy Genius podcasts are complementary... Why Haven’t We Found Aliens? and Should We Go to Mars?

The Smithsonian Had To Dig Up Their Dinosaurs Again - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Book of the day: Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism – by Jörg Guido Hülsmann

Links

Afternoon tea with Sir James Dyson (LINK)

Mohnish Pabrai's Talk With Dakshana Scholars (JNV Silvassa), Feb. 25, 2018 (video) (LINK)

The Knock-On Effect Podcast: Demographics And Doorways (LINK)

The Art of Manliness Podcast: Theodore Roosevelt, Writer and Reader (LINK)

Related book: Theodore Roosevelt: A Literary Life

Fear of Humans Is Making Animals Around the World Go Nocturnal [H/T Linc] (LINK)

The Neuroscientific Case for Facing Your Fears - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Asteroids and Adversaries: Challenging What NASA Knows About Space Rocks (LINK)

Two years ago, NASA dismissed and mocked an amateur’s criticisms of its asteroids database. Now Nathan Myhrvold is back, and his papers have passed peer review.

Links

“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.” --Bruce Lee [H/T Latticework]

Jeff Bezos: ‘We will have to leave this planet … and it’s going to make this planet better’ [H/T @MarceloPLima] (LINK)

Atul Gawande's commencement address at U.C.L.A. Medical School: Curiosity and What Equality Really Means (LINK)

Saving As Many Lives As Penicillin - Dr. Atul Gawande & Malcolm Gladwell (video) [From October of last year, but not sure I had previously seen this one.] (LINK)

Mohnish Pabrai's latest appearance on ET Now (video) (LINK)

The Psychology of Money - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

“Proprietary Product Distribution” is Better than Sliced Bread - by Tren Griffin (LINK)

De Beers to Sell Diamonds Made in a Lab (LINK)

Your Next Glass of Wine Might Be a Fake—and You'll Love It (LINK)

Worried About Big Tech? Chinese Giants Make America’s Look Tame (LINK)

In Conversation: Netflix' Ted Sarandos and Marc Andreessen (video) (LINK)

Why Your Brain Hates Other People (And how to make it think differently.) (LINK)

The Myth of 'Learning Styles' [H/T @AdamMGrant, who summarizes in his Tweet: "Your learning style is about how you like to learn, not how you learn best. Although you might enjoy listening, reading, or doing, there's no evidence that you learn better that way. We all learn through a combo of auditory, visual, and kinesthetic modes."] (LINK)