Links

Here's what's in the $2T stimulus package — and what's next (LINK)

GMO White Paper | Memo to the (Virtual) Investment Committee II: Fear and the Psychology of Bear Markets - by James Montier (LINK)

Q&A with Murray Stahl (audio recorded March 24, 2020) (LINK)

MOI Global: Isaac Schwartz on Intelligent Investing in Crisis Mode (video) (LINK)

Corporate Socialism: The Government is Bailing Out Investors & Managers Not You - by Nassim Taleb (with Mark Spitznagel) (LINK)

The curious age discrimination of coronavirus - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

The Pandemic in My Neighborhood - by Michael Lewis (LINK)

How Does the Coronavirus Behave Inside a Patient? - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

Links

"A really wonderful business is very well protected against the vicissitudes of the economy over time and the competition. I mean, we’re talking about businesses that are resistant to effective competition. And three of those will be better than 100 average businesses. And they’ll be safer, incidentally. There is less risk in owning three easy-to-identify, wonderful businesses than there is in owning 50 well-known, big businesses." --Warren Buffett (1996)

Horizon Kinetics Q3 Commentary (LINK) [Audio Q3 call is also available, HERE.]

Putting the Buy-and-Hold Gospel to the Ultimate Test - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

Microsoft Is the Surprise Winner of a $10B Pentagon Contract (LINK)

How much longer can the debt-burdened consumer hold up the U.S. economy? (LINK)

The Fall of WeWork: How a Startup Darling Came Unglued ($) (LINK)

Adam Neumann Is the Most Talented Grifter of Our Time - by Derek Thompson (LINK)

Acquired Podcast: The WeWork “Acquisition” (LINK)

The Acquirers Podcast: Connor Haley talks long/short microcaps (LINK)

Exponent Podcast: 176 — The Second Estate Era (LINK)

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: 64 - Supernova in the East III (LINK)

Sequoia - Remembering Don Valentine (LINK)

Fossil trove shows life's fast recovery after big extinction [H/T Linc] (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

"You have to keep learning that you don’t know, because you find models that work, ways to make money, and then they blow sky-high. There’s always somebody around who looks very smart. I’ve learned that the people who are the most smart aren’t going to make it. What’s great about this business is that you keep learning. In fact, I don’t know anybody who left investing to become an engineer, but I know a lot of engineers who left engineering to become investors. It’s just so infinitely challenging. You just have to be prepared to be wrong and to understand that your ego had better not depend on being proven right. Being wrong is part of the process. It’s really why the market fluctuates." --Peter Bernstein  [Source]

The Psychology of Prediction - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Billionaire’s 2005 ‘Almanack’ of sage advice finds an audience in S.F. tech world (LINK)

Related book: Poor Charlie's Almanack

Blind Spots in Investing (LINK)

The Amazing Story of Guidewire Software (LINK)

Horizon Kinetics' 2nd Quarter Commentary (LINK)

The Mirage of Cloud Gaming (And How to Reach the Oasis) - by Matthew Ball (LINK)

Cloud game delivery and "Netflix of Gaming" are the big new "things" in media today. But they're unlikely to deliver the player or playtime growth that many expect.

D.I.Y. Private Equity Is Luring Small Investors (LINK)

Amateur investors are setting up high-risk, high-return deals on their own, but the key to success varies.

This Banker Gets to Drink Wine All Day ($) (LINK)

China’s Built a Railroad to Nowhere in Kenya [H/T @wolfejosh] (LINK)

Acquired Podcast: Huawei (LINK)

Retirement Is A State Of Mind (LINK)

Notre-Dame came far closer to collapsing than people knew. This is how it was saved. [H/T @morganhousel] (LINK)

The Human Brain Project Hasn’t Lived Up to Its Promise - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Book of the day: The Moon: A History for the Future

Links

The Lies We Tell (LINK)

Greenhaven Road Capital's Q1 Letter (LINK)

Horizon Kinetics Q1 Commentary (LINK)

How Schwab Ate Wall Street ($) (LINK)

Do Ride-Sharing Customers Sit in Front? - by Howard Schilit (LINK)

Near-record inventories pinch dealers [H/T @DRuizG80] (LINK)

The Acquirers Podcast: Marvel’s Hidden Assets: Joseph Calandro Jr. chats to Tobias Carlisle on the Acquirers Podcast (LINK)

Related paper: M&A deal-making: Disney, Marvel and the value of “hidden assets”

The Peter Attia Drive (podcast): Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.: The pervasive effect of stress - is it killing you? (LINK)

Related books: Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst; Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Related previous link: Robert Sapolsky on The Ezra Klein Show

MIT Self-Driving Cars: State of the Art (video) [H/T Linc] (LINK)

On Monks and Email - by Cal Newport (LINK)

The Uncomfortable Truth - by Mark Manson (LINK)

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

The near misses of scientific history - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

Related book: Unravelling the Double Helix

Mysterious Rings Around Reefs Have No Simple Explanation - Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"There is less risk in owning three easy-to-identify, wonderful businesses than there is in owning 50 well-known, big businesses.... If you find three wonderful businesses in your life, you’ll get very rich." --Warren Buffett (1996)

"If you’re right about the companies, you can hold them at pretty high values." --Charlie Munger (1996)

"We really have a great reluctance to sell businesses where we like both the business and the people. So I don’t think I’d count on seeing many sales. But if you ever attend a meeting here, and there are [holdings at] 60 or 70 times earnings, keep an eye on me.... You can really hold them at extraordinary levels if you’ve got [wonderful businesses]." --Warren Buffett (1996)

"Generally speaking, I think if you’re sure enough about a business being wonderful, it’s more important to be certain about the business being a wonderful business than it is to be certain that the price is not 10 percent too high or 5 percent too high or something of the sort." --Warren Buffett (1997)

"All intelligent investing is value investing. You have to acquire more than you really pay for, and that’s a value judgment. But you can look for more than you’re paying for in a lot of different ways. You can use filters to sift the investment universe. And if you stick with stocks that can’t possibly be wonderful to just put away in your safe deposit box for 40 years, but are underpriced, then you have to keep moving around all the time. As they get closer to what you think the real value is, you have to sell them, and then find others. And so, it’s an active kind of investing. The investing where you find a few great companies and just sit on your ass because you’ve correctly predicted the future, that is what it’s very nice to be good at." --Charlie Munger (2000)

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger on diversification (video excerpt from the 1996 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting) (LINK)

Related previous post: Charlie Munger on diversification

***

The BuzzFeed Lesson - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Greenhaven Road Capital's Q4 Letter (LINK)

Horizon Kinetics Q4 Commentary [H/T @chriswmayer] (LINK) [There are also a bunch more Q4 investor letters posted HERE.]

For Bill Simmons’s The Ringer, Podcasting Is the Main Event ($) (LINK)

Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of Stripe, on EconTalk (podcast) (LINK)

Opportunity costs just went up - by Seth Godin (LINK)

Getting Ahead By Being Inefficient (LINK)

Links

Matt Rose: “Less is NOT better” - Railway Age [H/T @oddballstocks] (LINK)

Murray Stahl and Steven Bregman on “Active Voice” (Value Investor Insight) (LINK)

The ETF liquidity question: Can the passive universe hold up in the event of a market crisis? (LINK)

Fed Piles Up $66 Billion in Paper Losses as It Faces Trump Wrath (LINK)

Jamie Dimon's CNBC interview from last week (video) (LINK)

James Grant on CNBC (video) (LINK)

The bright side of Britain’s Brexit chaos - by Sebastian Mallaby (LINK)

Congress May Have Fallen for Facebook’s Trap, but You Don’t Have To (LINK)

The WIRED Guide to 5G (LINK)

Brian McCullough: "How the Internet Happened: from Netscape to the iPhone" | Talks at Google (LINK)

SpaceX's Gwynne Shotwell says we'll be on Mars this decade (podcast) (LINK)

Will half of all colleges really close in the next decade? (LINK)

The Viruses That Eavesdrop on Their Hosts - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

Tony Deden's remarks at the Grant's Fall Conference (LINK)

Horizon Kinetics‬⁩ Q3 Commentary [H/T @chriswmayer] (LINK)

Sears’s Edward Lampert Was a Wizard. Now He’s Coming to Terms With Failure [H/T @williamgreen72] (LINK)

Action Speaks Louder Than Words - by Sean Iddings (LINK)

Bethany McLean chats about her book Saudi America, on a panel with Climate One (video) (LINK)

“There Ain’t Gonna Be No Core” - by Jason Zweig (LINK)

The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust [H/T @kevin2kelly] (LINK)

The Race Is On to Feed China’s Giant Appetite for Pork—and the U.S. Is Losing ($) (LINK)

TED Talk: The pharmacy of the future? Personalized pills, 3D printed at home | Daniel Kraft (LINK)

Jocko Willink & Leif Babin talk to James Altucher about their new book, The Dichotomy of Leadership (podcast) (LINK)

Freakonomics Radio (podcast): How to Be Creative (LINK)

Cuttlefish: Wearing thoughts on the skin (video) (LINK)

Links

​Value Investor Klarman Watching for Stumbles Among ‘Unicorns’ (LINK) [And if anyone happens to have a copy of Klarman's letter that they'd be willing to share (valueinvestingworld@gmail.com), I'd be much appreciative. Thanks.]

Morgan Housel's presentation at last year's MicroCap Leadership Summit: What Other Industries Teach Us About Investing (video) (LINK)

Horizon Kinetics: 4th Quarter Commentary [H/T @chriswmayer] (LINK)

Future U.S. Equity Returns: A Best-Case Upper Limit [H/T The Big Picture] (LINK)

The Biggest Electric Vehicle Company You’ve Never Heard Of [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Shenzhen’s BYD, which started as a battery company, is a giant in China—and its ambitions are increasingly global.

Super Bass-O-Matic Subscriptions: Lessons from Rovco on Customer Retention - by Tren Griffin (LINK)

The techlash against Amazon, Facebook and Google—and what they can do (LINK)

Exponent Podcast: Episode 137 — Addicted to Facebook (LINK)

Why you should check email less often, and how to do it (LINK)

The World Has Never Seen an Oil Spill Like This (LINK)

‘Least Racist Person’ Is Scared of Great Whites - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Adam Grant interviews Walter Issacson about his biography of Leonardo da Vinci [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Related book: Leonardo da Vinci

Links

"When bargains are scarce, value investors must be patient; compromising standards is a slippery slope to disaster. New opportunities will emerge, even if we don’t know when or where." - Seth Klarman

CBS Sunday Profile: Warren Buffett (video) [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Buffett's Fruit of the Loom Tries on Subscription Underwear [H/T Linc] (LINK)

The Interesting Story of the Founding of the Fed - by John Huber (LINK)

Related book: America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

Tax Cuts, Debt, & The Pretense of Knowledge - by Frank Martin (LINK)

Platform business models are transforming insurance – by Sangeet Paul Choudary (LINK)

Bitcoin, Ignorance, and You - by Jason Zweig (LINK)

The Winklevoss twins' September 17, 2013 Value Investing Congress presentation on Bitcoin (LINK)

Bitcoin Storms Wall Street (LINK)

And to repeat from last week... Howard Marks' comments about Bitcoin in his last memo ("Yet Again?"), which he wrote after chatting with the Horizon Kinetics team and others, are also worth revisiting (starting on page 4).

The cannibalizing effect of share buybacks. Are there parallels with Japan’s bubble years? (LINK)

Tim O'Reilly: "WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us" | Talks at Google (LINK)

Exponent Podcast: Episode 133 — Two Terrible Options (LINK)

Reading at work - by Seth Godin (LINK)

Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Scallops Have Eyes, and Each One Builds a Beautiful Living Mirror - by Ed Yong (LINK)

We Might Absorb Billions of Viruses Every Day (And that’s a good thing.) (LINK)

The Complicated Legacy Of A Panda Who Was Really Good At Sex [H/T @edyong209] (LINK)

Book of the day [H/T Evan Osnos]: The China Fantasy

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." - Eric Hoffer

Links

"The doctor is not infallible and does not know everything, and it's a shame that we need to thrust him into a position where he has to seem infallible in order to make everybody feel good. Because we are much better off if he's very aware of how highly fallible he is and how little we do know. That's how progress happens. You start by acknowledging what you do not know." - Michael Lewis

Why a Value Investor Decided to Buy Bitcoin (LINK)

Bitcoin isn’t exactly your classic value investment. It’s one of the most volatile assets in the world, and it doesn’t have much of a “book” value – unlike a company that owns physical assets, Bitcoin can’t sell its headquarters if things get rough. There is, of course, no Bitcoin headquarters. 

But Murray Stahl, a longtime value investor who now manages $5.5 billion at his New York-based investment firm Horizon Kinetics, considers Bitcoin “the ultimate value investment.” His original $7 million investment from two years ago has ballooned as Bitcoin’s price has soared, and he now holds about $100 million worth. As of Monday, each Bitcoin is worth about $9,500.

Note.... Howard Marks' comments about Bitcoin in his last memo ("Yet Again?"), which he wrote after chatting with the Horizon Kinetics team and others, are also worth revisiting (starting on page 4).

Michael Lewis chats with Eric Topol (LINK)

Related book: The Undoing Project

Pro-Neutrality, Anti-Title II  - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Soft Robots Acquire Origami Skeletons for Super-Strength [H/T Linc] (LINK)

A review of some of the bids to woo Amazon’s HQ2 to other cities and states shows it’s not all about the money. In some cases democracy itself is a bargaining chip. [H/T Techmeme] (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Angel Investing and Trend Spotting, w/ Joanne Wilson  (LINK)

Tim Urban talks with Tim Ferriss on Tribe of Mentors Podcast (LINK)

The Decades-Long Quest to Make Virus-Proof Mosquitoes - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Sputnik at 60 - by Vaclav Smil (LINK)

The 2nd edition of Smil's Oil - A Beginner's Guide also appears to be available to purchase in paperback early next year (available on Kindle now).

Links

"I think 'virtue' sometimes gets a bad name, especially on the left, because it’s so associated with the Christian virtues and Christianity. But I think if we go back to an older Greek notion, where the virtues are excellences, arêtes. The arête, or excellence of a person is — well, there are many: to be hospitable, to be kind, to be honorable and honest. There are many virtues of a person. So I do think that virtue ethics is the only philosophical theory that matches human nature. I’d like to see us return to talking about virtues and teaching kids virtues." - Jonathan Haidt (Source ---- See also: Areté)

Further Analysis of Multi-Bagger Stocks (LINK)

Baupost's Klarman: Investors are asking the wrong question about the stock market (LINK)

Hedge fund Baupost snaps up claims against Toshiba [H/T Will] (LINK)

Horizon Kinetics: 3rd Quarter Commentary (LINK)

Vicksburg native meets Warren Buffett [H/T Linc] (LINK)

“The first question we asked was if somehow his worth was reduced to just one million, then would he be able to do it all over again in today’s environment because the environment has changed so much since he started investing and buying companies,” Rutherford said. “He said he would be able to. He said it would be very difficult. He wouldn’t be able to do it in the exact same way, but he said he would be able to he thinks because he gets his edge from being so interested in the subject.”

Reboot for the AI revolution - by Yuval Noah Harari [H/T Tamás] (LINK)

Related book: Homo Deus

The War To Sell You A Mattress Is An Internet Nightmare [H/T Matt] (LINK)

Young subscribers flock to old media [H/T Linc] (LINK)

The Art-World Insider Who Went Too Far (from 2016) [H/T @patrick_oshag] (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Ladder: The Fitness Marketplace, w/ Brett Maloley (LINK)

This week’s episode is part of an experiment and so requires a longer than normal introduction. 

I’ve come to view this podcast as a learning tool, a means to understand a new topic in a short window of time. One of those areas is venture capital and startups—an area that one year ago was completely foreign to me. I think the best way to learn is aggressive immersion in a topic along with some consequences, what we often call some skin in the game. Accordingly, this is a conversation with the founder of a startup in which I am an investor.

Walter Isaacson talks with Kara Swisher on the Recode Decode podcast: What can Leonardo da Vinci teach us about tech? (LINK)

Related book: Leonardo da Vinci

The Deadly Panic-Neglect Cycle in Pandemic Funding - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"Ambition means tying your well being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Kyle Bass on Greece, Puerto Rico and Cryptocurrencies (video) [H/T Matt] (LINK)

Google's Search for the Sweet Spot - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Horizon Kinetics: Diversification and the Active Manager (Part I, Part II)

Notes From Great Investors Best Ideas Conference (GIBI) Dallas 2017 (LINK)

Eric Cinnamond answers some reader questions (LINK)

The destabilizing truth of the retail apocalypse: it’s more about inequality than e-commerce. (LINK)

The value of raising the threshold of crappiness - by Rory Sutherland (LINK)

PBS FRONTLINE: North Korea's Deadly Dictator (LINK)

New Neuroscience Reveals 2 Rituals That Will Make You More Mindful (LINK)

The Most Beautiful Death Trap - by Ed Yong (LINK)

A New History of the First Peoples in the Americas (LINK)

Related book: A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes - by Adam Rutherford

The book of the day is the one Jeff Bezos tweeted was long his favorite novel: The Remains of the Day - by Kazuo Ishiguro

Links

Philosophical Economics: Profit Margins, Bayes’ Theorem, and the Dangers of Overconfidence (LINK)

2006 paper from Michael Mauboussin -- "Expectations Investing: Reading Stock
Prices for Better Returns" (LINK)

FRMO August 2017 Letter [H/T @BluegrassCap] (LINK)

A Dozen Lessons about Investing and Money from Dan Ariely - by Tren Griffin (LINK)

Related book (to be released in November): Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter

Mutual Fund Observer, September 2017 (LINK)

Kroger Seeks to Repel Amazon’s Onslaught ($) (LINK)

Has disruption from e-commerce run its course? (LINK)

These Robots Are Using Static Electricity to Make Nikes [H/T @kevinroose] (LINK)

Sheryl Sandberg Just Gave Some Brilliant Career Advice. Here It Is in 2 Words [H/T @ChrisPavese] (LINK)

I want you to think about the following question, because it can mean the difference between just getting through the day at work, and doing the best work of your life.  

What's the most important thing you can get done today? 

Sheryl Sandberg recently spoke to Inc. to share some lessons learned over the years. One concept she spoke about really resonated with me. 

It's called:  

Ruthless prioritization. 

"I think the most important thing we've learned as we've grown is that we have to prioritize," said Sandberg. "We talk about it as ruthless prioritization. And by that what we mean is only do the very best of the ideas. Lots of times you have very good ideas. But they're not as good as the most important thing you could be doing. And you have to make the hard choices."

a16z Podcast: Competing Against Luck (LINK)

Related book: Competing Against Luck  

Related previous conversation between Christensen and Andreessen: a16z Podcast: Disruption in Business… and Life

Prof Scott Galloway’s 10 Rules for Your Career (LINK)

An old post I was reminded of and have been thinking about today: Charlie Munger on how he invested when younger compared to today, and how he reads books

Links

The 19 Questions to Ask Your Financial Adviser - by Jason Zweig (LINK)

GMO White Paper -- The Good Thing About Climate Change: Opportunities (LINK)

In this white paper, Lucas White, GMO Climate Change portfolio manager, and Jeremy Grantham describe the exciting opportunities in companies in the public equity market who are involved in combating climate change (i.e., the climate change sector), either through climate change mitigation or helping the world adapt to climate change.

Horizon Kinetics' New Commentary: When is A P/E Not a P/E, or How To Turn 90 into 22 in Three Easy Steps (LINK)

Gresham’s Law & Growing Weeds - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

The Logic of Risk Taking – by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (LINK)

What I Learned in the Last year - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Inside Waymo's Secret World for Training Self-Driving Cars (LINK)

How Roger Federer Upgraded His Game [H/T @MarceloPLima] (LINK)

A Grand Unified Theory of Unhealthy Microbiomes - by Ed Yong (LINK)

The Anna Karenina hypothesis says that every unbalanced microbiome is unbalanced in its own way.

Links

Another great 2006 quote from Howard Marks, that is probably worth thinking hard about today:

The workings of free capital markets require that in order to overcome investors’ innate aversion to risk, seemingly riskier investments must offer the possibility of higher returns providing “risk premiums.” But when risk aversion is at cyclical lows, risk premiums needn’t be generous; people will invest anyway. Too many people trying to dine at the buffet simultaneously can lead to a disorderly process and skimpy portions. I recommend that you look twice at the cost of admission and – if you do decide to partake – proceed carefully.

Horizon Kinetics' Q2 Conference Call Slides [H/T @chriswmayer] (LINK) [And Commentary HERE.]

Where Are the Dips? The Weird, Unsettling Rise of Global Stocks This Year (LINK)

Stock markets go up and down: It is a fact of life. Except in 2017. 

Three major stock-market benchmarks in the U.S., Europe and Asia have avoided pullbacks this year, commonly defined as 5% declines from recent highs. Never in at least the past 30 years have all three indexes—the S&P 500, MSCI Europe and MSCI Asia-Pacific ex-Japan—gone a calendar year without falling at some point by at least 5%.

Bill Gross' July 2017 Investment Outlook (LINK)

It’s never too late to succeed: How this 60-year-old founder took her business from zero to $500 million in 6 years [H/T Matt] (LINK)

Related video: The RealReal's Julie Wainwright Had to Get Out of Town After Pets.com

The surest way to go broke in America today is to get sick. (LINK)

Related book: An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back

Graham Allison: "Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?" | Talks at Google (LINK)

Why I Hate Adverbs - by Jason Zweig (LINK)

HBR IdeaCast podcast: Nike's Co-founder on Innovation, Culture, and Succession (LINK)

Related book: Shoe Dog

Freakonomics Radio (podcast): These Shoes Are Killing Me! (LINK)

The human foot is an evolutionary masterpiece, far more functional than we give it credit for. So why do we encase it in "a coffin" (as one foot scholar calls it) that stymies so much of its ability — and may create more problems than it solves?

Revisionist History podcast: "The King of Tears" (LINK)

In this week's episode, I identify a musical divide in America - the sad song line. I wanted to know: why does half the country prefer rock n' roll music, while the other half prefers country? And what is it about some music that makes us so sad? 

The questions begged for answers. So I tracked down the King of Tears himself, a man who has written more sad songs than almost anyone else, to find out.

The Man Who Blew The Door Off The Microbial World - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

Testing Mattresses with Warren Buffett - By Bill Gates (LINK)

Habits vs Goals: A Look at the Benefits of a Systematic Approach to Life (LINK)

Murray Stahl’s Presentation on Value Creation from Value Destruction (video) (LINK)

Greatest Hits From Michael Mauboussin & Meir Statman - by Ben Carlson (LINK)

The Unsung Heroes of Investing - by Phil Huber [H/T @jasonzweigwsj] (LINK)

An In Depth Look At The Greatest Minds Of Investing (podcast) (LINK)

Related book: The Great Minds of Investing - by William Green

Legendary short seller Jim Chanos tells us what he sees for the markets this year (video) [H/T Barry Ritholtz] (LINK)

Bill Gross talks about investing (video) (LINK)

Eric Schmidt chats with Reid Hoffman (podcast) (LINK)

a16z Podcast: Modernizing Government Services, from Food Stamps to Foster Care (LINK)

Cialdini Asks: Dan Ariely (video) (LINK)

Mark Sisson's Definitive Guide to the Ketogenic Diet (LINK)

Related book (to be released in October): The Keto Reset Diet

Scientists Have Found the Oldest Known Human Fossils - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Lawrence M. Krauss: "The Greatest Story Ever Told...So Far" | Talks at Google (LINK)

Related book: The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

Links

"I think that a life properly lived is just learn, learn, learn all the time. And I think Berkshire's gained enormously from these investment decisions by learning, through a long, long period. Every time you appoint a new person that's never had big capital allocation experience, it's like rolling the dice. We're way better off having done it for so long. But the decisions blend; and the one feature that comes through is the continuous learning. If we had not kept learning, you wouldn't even be here. You'd be alive probably, but not here." -Charlie Munger (47:48-48:35 of the YouTube video from the annual meeting)

"I think we have one other advantage: A lot of other people are trying to be brilliant and we're just trying to stay rational. It's a big advantage." -Charlie Munger (1:17:29)

I'm back after a fun weekend in Omaha. For those that missed the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, the replay is available HERE. And it also appears to be on YouTube HERE. The Wall Street Journal also had some good coverage HERE. 

***

Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and Bill Gates also appeared on CNBC this morning. Here are links to those videos (Someone also seems to have put the CNBC show on YouTube HERE): 

Buffett: I should have had better insight into Google 

Buffett: If I had to short or buy Google, I'd buy it  

Buffett: Little price sensitivity for Apple  

Buffett: There are a lot of possibilities with IBM's Watson

Buffett: I've got the cure for AI...  

Buffett: I don't put too much weight in any given election

Buffett: I've never made a trade based on GDP

Buffett: Natural gas prices help railroads

Buffett: Housing improving but not booming

Buffett: Credit card sales tell a lot about the consumer

Buffett: 3G has followed the standard capitalist formula

Buffett: Productivity is the 'guts' of capitalism

Buffett: United made a mistake in initial response

Buffett: Airline passengers are very price conscious

Buffett: Wells Fargo obviously incentivized the wrong thing

Buffett: High load factor and airlines

Buffett: If you pay big prices for something, you're counting on earnings

Buffett: 5 highest value companies don't take capital

Buffett: Jeff Bezos was brillant

Buffett: Stocks a bargain if you think rates stay low

Charlie Munger: We should have single-payer medicine

Charlie Munger: There's a lot to be said for health care for all

Buffett: Health-care bill huge tax cut for the rich

Fixing America's health-care system

Buffett: I'm very suspicious of dynamic scoring

Bill Gates: State Department helps us 'perform miracles'

Bill Gates: You need health care, education and opportunity to escape poverty trap

Charlie Munger: Lot of idiotic deals in venture capital

Charlie Munger: Every failure stings

Buffett: I don't make investment decisions based on who's president

Buffett: 'Unlimited' resources of our friendship

***

Other links...

Warren Buffett Isn’t Retiring but Some of His Lieutenants Are (LINK)

Look Back and Learn: A History of Mutual Funds - by Jason Zweig (LINK)

Quantitative Investing: A Crisis Waiting to Happen - by Jason Zweig (LINK)

Related book: The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction - by Richard Bookstaber

A Dozen Lessons on Finance and Business from Ambrose Bierce - by Tren Griffin (LINK)

The Brooklyn Investor blog discusses Fairfax India Holdings (LINK)

Horizon Kinetics: 1st Quarter Commentary [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK)

What to Do When You Fail in China (Pt 1): Danone vs. Carlsberg Beer - by Jeffrey Towson (LINK)

Bill Gurley On Transforming Health Care - The Ezra Klein Show (podcast) (LINK)

How I Built This podcast - Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler (LINK)

Exponent podcast: Episode 113 — WeChat, China, and Apple (LINK)

Bruce Greenwald and Joseph Stiglitz discuss globalization at Columbia Business School's 2017 Reunion Weekend (video) [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK)

Tyler Cowen on EconTalk (podcast) (LINK)

Related book: The Complacent Class

Steve Keen on the Macro Voices podcast (LINK)

Related book (recently released): Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis?

The Mozart in the Machine - by Yuval Noah Harari [H/T The Browser] (LINK)

The Meaning Of Life In A World Without Work Society - by Yuval Noah Harari (LINK)

Related book: Homo Deus

How a Frog Became the First Mainstream Pregnancy Test - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Book of the day [H/T Chris]: Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II

***

On a separate note, I'm also looking to try and find a PDF of all of the past issues of Outstanding Investor Digest. There are a few issues and/or sections of issues floating around for free online, but given the quality of the information, it would be great to have them all. And given the difficulty of communicating with OID, even if one is willing to pay to have them, I thought I'd check in and see if anyone out there has already compiled them and might be willing to share. If yes, my email address is: valueinvestingworld@gmail.com. Thanks!

Links

Howard Marks at a CFA Society India event in Mumbai (video) [H/T @Sanjay__Bakshi] (LINK)

Jamie Dimon's 2016 Shareholder Letter (LINK)

GMO's Grantham: Stocks 'Decently Different This Time' (video) [H/T Barry Ritholtz] (LINK)

Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of Boston investment firm GMO, doesn't expect valuations to drop back to normal levels for two decades. But he is keeping cash on hand to take advantage of any dip, which he says would need to be 15-20% to act.

Horizon Kinetics: The Indexation That Is, Versus The Indexation That Should Be (LINK)

Jim O'Shaughnessy: "What Works on Wall Street" | Talks at Google (video) (LINK)

Schiff's Insurance Observer's February blog post (first post since 2009) --  The Big Fall: Greenberg Admits He Oversaw Sleazy Transactions [H/T @GnDsville] (LINK)

Meb Faber chats with Raoul Pal (podcast) (LINK)

How do winning consumer-goods companies capture growth? [H/T @Find_Me_Value] (LINK)

Toronto Home Prices Just Jumped Another 33% (video plays) [H/T Matt] (LINK)

New details on Amazon's move to shutter the company it bought for $545 million (video plays) [H/T Matt] (LINK)

Mutual Fund Observer, April 2017 (LINK)

Speech by Andrew Haldane: A little more conversation - A little less action (LINK)

The Absolute Return Letter - April 2017: The truth about Brexit (LINK)

a16z Podcast: Cryptocurrencies, App Coins, and Investing in Protocols (LINK)

Siddhartha Mukherjee talks with Charlie Rose about his latest article, "A.I. Versus M.D." (video) (LINK) ["Genetic technology is A.I. I mean these two things are changing what human beings will be like in the future. There's no doubt about that, so it's something to know about; and particularly in medicine."]

Related book: The Gene

Get More Done By Working Less (LINK)

Related book: Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less 

Related video: Five Good Questions for Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Why Are Maker Schedules So Rare? (LINK)

Edge #490: Urban Evolution - A Conversation With Jonathan Losos (LINK)

Trees Have Their Own Songs - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Related book (just released): The Songs of Trees

Coastal Carolina football team goes to prison to learn a lesson (LINK)

Today's Audible Daily Deal ($3.95) is a book I've mentioned before: Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe - by Mike Massimino

Links

Warren Buffett Says Donald Trump Won't Derail the Economy [H/T Will] (LINK)

Transcript of the 2016 FRMO Corporation Annual Meeting of Shareholders [H/T Daniel] (LINK)

OpenDoor: A Startup Worth Emulating - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Tim Ferriss on the James Altucher podcast (Part 1) (LINK)

Related book: Tools of Titans

From Deep Tallies to Deep Schedules: A Recent Change To My Deep Work Habits - by Cal Newport (LINK)

Related book: Deep Work

Scientists Turn Nuclear Waste into Diamond Batteries That’ll Last for Thousands of Years (LINK)

Covering the Cops - By Calvin Trillin [A 1986 article described by Charles Duhigg (on the James Altucher podcast) as being "one of the best-written pieces on the face of the planet."] (LINK)

[Trillin is also the author of Messages from My Father, a book one of Charlie Munger's children once sent to him, and in which Munger then sent to the rest of his family. See pages 44-45 of Poor Charlie's Almanack for the story.]