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

"Another mistake that people often make is that they compare themselves with others who are making more money than they are and conclude that they should emulate the others’ actions ... after they’ve worked. This is the source of the herd behavior that so often gets them into trouble. We're all human and so we’re subject to these influences, but we mustn’t succumb. This is why the best investors are quite cold-blooded in their professional activities." --Howard Marks (Source)

The Tim Ferriss Show (podcast): #406: Bob Iger — CEO and Chairman of Disney (LINK)

Related book: The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company

MOI Global: Selected Session Highlights from Best Ideas 2020 (LINK)

Patrick O’Shaughnessy's Q4 2019 Letter to Investors (LINK)

The 47,500% Return: Meet The Billionaire Family Behind The Hottest Stock Of The Past 30 Years (LINK)

Where the Shelters Are Full and the Skyscrapers Are Vacant (LINK)

IEA Conversations (podcast): Matt Ridley: The last decade was the best in human history (LINK)

Macro Voices Podcast: #202 Grant Williams [enters at the 16:33 mark] (LINK)

Freakonomics Radio (podcast): The Opioid Tragedy, Part 1: “We’ve Addicted an Entire Generation” (LINK)

Weird dust clouds orbiting our galaxy’s central black hole may be weirder than we thought (LINK)

This Strange Microbe May Mark One of Life’s Great Leaps [H/T Linc] (LINK)

How Did Humans Boil Water Before the Invention of Pots? (LINK)

"No tree which the wind does not often blow against is firm and strong; for it is stiffened by the very act of being shaken, and plants its roots more securely: those which grow in a sheltered valley are brittle: and so it is to the advantage of good men, and causes them to be undismayed, that they should live much amidst alarms, and learn to bear with patience what is not evil save to him who endures it ill." --Seneca ("On Providence")

Links

"If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires." --Epicurus

Penny-Pinching Funds Are Going to Get Even Cheaper - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

Jim Grant Is a Wall Street Cult Hero. Does It Matter If He’s Often Wrong? (LINK)

Miami Real Estate Is About To Collapse... (LINK)

Five Good Questions Podcast: John Browne - Make, Think, Imagine (LINK)

Related book: Make, Think, Imagine: Engineering the Future of Civilization

Acquired Podcast: Sequoia Capital (Part 1) (LINK)

The Life-Changing Magic of Having ‘Enough’ - by Ryan Holiday (LINK)

"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbour's property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of gains to come? Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough." --Seneca (Source)

Links

"No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have." --Seneca

The Big Short’s Michael Burry Sees a Bubble in Passive Investing (LINK)

‘They Get Fired All the Time. And They Have No Idea Why.’ [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Pop culture lionizes the dazzling brilliance of money managers on the autism spectrum. Reality rarely measures up.

How you can make better predictions [H/T Linc] (LINK)

You Better Love This - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Bethany McLean on the Axios Pro Rata podcast discussing her latest article (LINK)

Venture Stories Podcast: A Primer on Information Marketplaces (LINK)

An excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell's upcoming audiobook, Talking to Strangers (LINK)

A Game of Giants - by Tim Urban (LINK)

Vulnerability: The Key to Better Relationships - by Mark Manson (LINK)

The Amazon Is Not Earth's Lungs - by Peter Brannen (LINK)

Book of the day: Faster, Higher, Farther: How One of the World's Largest Automakers Committed a Massive and Stunning Fraud

Links

"Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power." --Seneca

A Few Gentle Thoughts on Journalism - by Jason Zweig (LINK)

What You Gain—and Lose—When You Lock Money Up for the Long Run - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

America’s Public Pensions Are Stuck In The Clouds ($) (LINK)

Beyond Ridiculous (LINK)

Oaktree Insights: Structured Credit Primer & Commentary (LINK)

Paradigm Shifts - by Ray Dalio (LINK)

Kyle Bass on CNBC last week (video) (LINK)

Value Investing with Legends Podcast: Connecting Theory and Practice Through The 5x5x5 Student Investment Fund (LINK)

Today’s conversation is with Tom Russo, the master of consumer brand investing, and two of our best students, Jeffrey Johnson '19 and Michael Allison '19. We’re talking about the 5x5x5 Student Investment Fund and having a deep discussion about some of the specific stocks in the portfolio. The concept for the 5x5x5 fund came out of Tom’s concern that conventional investment funds for students offered limited learning potential due to their short-term nature and was made possible by a generous gift given by him and his wife, Georgina.

a16z Podcast: The Search for the Secret Metal that Powers All Our Devices (LINK)

Revisionist History Podcast: Dr. Rock’s Taxonomy (LINK)

Radiolab Podcast: G: Unnatural Selection (LINK)

This past fall, a scientist named Steve Hsu made headlines with a provocative announcement. He would start selling a genetic intelligence test to couples doing IVF: a sophisticated prediction tool, built on big data and machine learning, designed to help couples select the best embryo in their batch. We wondered, how does that work? What can the test really say? And do we want to live in a world where certain people can decide how smart their babies will be?

Should the Rich Be Allowed to Buy the Best Genes? - by Walter Isaacson (LINK)

What Tick Saliva Does to the Human Body - by Sarah Zhang (LINK)

The Stump That Didn’t Die - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Through underground connections with its neighbors, it somehow stays alive. What does that say about the concept of a tree, or the future of forests?

Book of the day: The Bubble that Broke the World - by Garet Garrett

Audible also has some notable titles currently on sale for $5....

The Fifth Risk - by Michael Lewis

Skunk Works - by Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos

The Crusades - by Thomas Asbridge

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World - by Andrea Wulf

The Sixth Extinction - by Elizabeth Kolbert

Cosmos - by Carl Sagan

Links

"The philosopher Cicero said something beautiful. He said, 'The thankful heart is not only the greatest of all the virtues, but it is the parent of all the other virtues.' And I think what that means is that people who are lucky should thank their luck, acknowledge it and revel in it. I think it will also make them want to share the fruits of their luck with others." --Howard Marks  [via The Knowledge Project]

Now that we're a decade from the crisis lows in the stock market, it might be an interesting time to revisit some of the FCIC interviews.

Capital Allocators Podcast: Thomas Russo – All About Google (LINK)

Virgin group: Brand it like Branson (LINK)

Jerome Powell's "60 Minutes" interview (video) (LINK)

On Startups, Platforms, and Innovation (LINK)

EconTalk Podcast: Amy Webb on Artificial Intelligence, Humanity, and the Big Nine (LINK)

Related book: The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity

How the U.S.-Russian Relationship Went Bad [H/T @GrahamTAllison] (LINK)

NASA Captures First Air-to-Air Images of Supersonic Shockwave Interaction in Flight [H/T Linc] (LINK)

"Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point. The false has no limits. When you are travelling on a road, there must be an end; but when astray, your wanderings are limitless. Recall your steps, therefore, from idle things, and when you would know whether that which you seek is based upon a natural or upon a misleading desire, consider whether it can stop at any definite point. If you find, after having travelled far, that there is a more distant goal always in view, you may be sure that this condition is contrary to nature." --Seneca

RIP Jack Bogle

"If a statue is ever erected to honor the person who has done the most for American investors, the handsdown choice should be Jack Bogle.... In his early years, Jack was frequently mocked by the investment-management industry. Today, however, he has the satisfaction of knowing that he helped millions of investors realize far better returns on their savings than they otherwise would have earned. He is a hero to them and to me. --Warren Buffett (2016 Annual Letter)

John Bogle, who founded Vanguard and revolutionized retirement savings, dies at 89 (LINK)

Jason Zweig recounts Mr. Bogle's long and influential career (video) (LINK)

***

Back when I was first reading Jack Bogle's book Enough, I emailed him the following quote from Seneca that I thought was a perfect compliment to the things he had written about in his book: 

"What difference does it make how much there is laid away in a man's safe or in his barns, how many head of stock he grazes or how much capital he puts out at interest, if he is always after what is another's and only counts what he has yet to get, never what he has already. You ask what is the proper limit to a person's wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough." 

Mr. Bogle was kind enough to both respond to my email as well as pass along some words of encouragement to a young man still early on in his investment career. A short while later, I came across another quote that reminded me of his book, and again passed it along. Though not quite as fitting as the one above, it was a longer quote from Arthur Schopenhauer:

"It is difficult, if not impossible, to define the limits which reason should impose on the desire for wealth; for there is no absolute or definite amount of wealth which will satisfy a man. The amount is always relative, that is to say, just so much as will maintain the proportion between what he wants and what he gets; for to measure a man's happiness only by what he gets, and not also by what he expects to get, is as futile as to try and express a fraction which shall have a numerator but no denominator. A man never feels the loss of things which it never occurs to him to ask for; he is just as happy without them; whilst another, who may have a hundred times as much, feels miserable because he has not got the one thing he wants. In fact, here too, every man has an horizon of his own, and he will expect as much as he thinks it is possible for him to get. If an object within his horizon looks as though he could confidently reckon on getting it, he is happy; but if difficulties come in the way, he is miserable. What lies beyond his horizon has no effect at all upon him. So it is that the vast possessions of the rich do not agitate the poor, and conversely, that a wealthy man is not consoled by all his wealth for the failure of his hopes. Riches, one may say, are like sea-water; the more you drink the thirstier you become; and the same is true of fame."

He once again replied with kindness and, as he put it, delight that those of us who digested his work made interesting connections to other things. And as I look back at the quotes above, they once again seem fitting ways to describe a great man that gave far more than he took from the world, and was always happy with having enough.

***

And since it's only fitting to let Mr. Bogle have the last word, let's go back to the inaugural issue of CFA Magazine (Jan/Feb 2003). Charley Ellis moderated a panel of investing greats (Bernstein, Bogle, Brinson, Buffett, LeBaron, Neff, and Templeton), and the final question he asked the panel was: "Given the option to say whatever you would like to say that, 30 years from now, bright, young people would be sitting down and reading, saying 'Gee, I'm glad I was able to read this particular thought,' what would that thought be?" Bogle's reply, which was the last among the panel members: 

"First, put the client’s interest ahead of your own, and, one day at a time, help to make this field of investing more of a profession and less of a business. Second, learn every day, but especially learn from the experiences of others. It’s cheaper! And third, never, never lose your idealism, no matter how rough your career might be, and never lose faith in your nation."

Seneca quote on endurance

"Fortune lashes and mangles us: well, let us endure it: it is not cruelty, it is a struggle, in which the oftener we engage the braver we shall become. The strongest part of the body is that which is exercised by the most frequent use: we must entrust ourselves to fortune to be hardened by her against herself: by degrees she will make us a match for herself. Familiarity with danger leads us to despise it. Thus the bodies of sailors are hardened by endurance of the sea, and the hands of farmers by work; the arms of soldiers are powerful to hurl darts, the legs of runners are active: that part of each man which he exercises is the strongest: so by endurance the mind becomes able to despise the power of misfortunes." --Seneca ("Of Providence")

....................

Related quotes:

"There were two vices much blacker and more serious than the rest: lack of persistence and lack of self-control....Endure and Renounce." --Epictetus

"By endurance we conquer." --Shackleton Family Motto (“Fortitudine Vincimus”)

Links

"It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it." --Seneca ("Of Providence")

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates visit a candy store in Omaha (LINK)

The Behavioral Economics Guide 2018 (Introduction by Robert Cialdini) (LINK)

Theranos Lessons - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

The Koch Brothers Say No to Tariffs (podcast) (LINK)

TED Talk: The surprising science of alpha males | Frans de Waal (LINK)

***

An excerpt from Burton Malkiel that I came across today in The Inflation-beater's Investment Guide: Winning Strategies for the 1980s that seemed to fit well with the latest Howard Marks memo:

I believe that the start of the 1980s is the ideal time to pick individual stocks on the basis of my rules. Unlike the early 1970s, it will not be hard to find an abundant selection of strong companies that fill the bill. 

But remember that a large number of other investors—including the pros—are trying to play the same game. And the efficient-market theory suggests that the odds of anyone's consistently beating the market are pretty slim. Nevertheless, for many of us, trying to outguess the market is a game that is much too fun to give up. Even if you were convinced you would not do any better than average, I'm sure that most of you with speculative temperaments would still want to keep on playing the game of selecting individual stocks. 

Picking the Manager 

There's an easier, more profitable way to gamble in the race for investment performance: instead of pricing the individual horses (stocks), pick the best jockeys (investment managers). 

...While some readers may well be disappointed that I do not "name" stocks in this book, I have absolutely no hesitation about citing mutual fund managers who run their portfolios by following rules similar to the rules I use and who have enjoyed perfectly splendid records. John Marks Templeton is one such person. 

...According to every mutual fund rating service, the fund that bears John Marks Templeton's name has been the outstanding performer over the past two decades. Indeed, Templeton's record of beating the broad stock indexes extends as far back as the 1930s. In a field crowded with mediocrity, Templeton seems to be one of the true investment greats—a living embarrassment to the efficient-market theory.

Links

"We must take a higher view of all things, and bear with them more easily: it better becomes a man to scoff at life than to lament over it. Add to this that he who laughs at the human race deserves better of it than he who mourns for it, for the former leaves it some good hopes of improvement, while the latter stupidly weeps over what he has given up all hopes of mending.... Yet it is better to accept public morals and human vices calmly without bursting into either laughter or tears; for to be hurt by the sufferings of others is to be forever miserable, while to enjoy the suffering of others is an inhuman pleasure." --Seneca [Source]

Everyone Makes Investing Mistakes — Even Warren Buffett - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

Related book: Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments

Deductive vs Inductive Reasoning: Make Smarter Arguments, Better Decisions, and Stronger Conclusions (LINK)

Black-Scholes, Volatility, & Risky Tales - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

The Scooter Economy - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Business and Investing Lessons from Rebecca Lynn (Canvas Ventures) - by Tren Griffin (LINK)

The Investors Podcast: Small Cap Investing & Intrinsic Value Calculations w/ Eric Cinnamond (LINK)

Grant’s Podcast: The Tesla episode (LINK)

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un’s Nuclear Summit and the Bid for History - by Evan Osnos (LINK)

TED Talk: Why the secret to success is setting the right goals | John Doerr (LINK)

Related book: Measure What Matters

Trees That Have Lived for Millennia Are Suddenly Dying - by Ed Yong (LINK)

***

For Audible members, Audible's latest sale has some good titles [And if you're not a member, and haven't yet done a free trial, you can get a free trial and 2 free audiobook credits by signing up HERE.]. Some of the titles that stood out to me are below:

Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist - by Roger Lowenstein

Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty - Daniel Schulman

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Jeff Cox

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters - by Richard P. Rumelt

Debt: The First 5,000 Years - by David Graeber

The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Anything - by Daniel Coyle

The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance - by David Epstein

The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History - by David Enrich

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World - by Peter Frankopan

Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life - by Daniel C. Dennett

Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers: Programs 1-6

Seveneves - by Neal Stephenson [a 2016 Bill Gates recommendation]

Links

"He who fears death will never act as becomes a living man: but he who knows that this fate was laid upon him as soon as he was conceived will live according to it, and by this strength of mind will gain this further advantage, that nothing can befall him unexpectedly: for by looking forward to everything which can happen as though it would happen to him, he takes the sting out of all evils, which can make no difference to those who expect it and are prepared to meet it: evil only comes hard upon those who have lived without giving it a thought and whose attention has been exclusively directed to happiness." --Seneca [Source]

Useful Hacks - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Life is More than Compounding Money - by Sean Iddings (LINK)

Carson Block at the Bloomberg Invest Summit (video) (LINK)

David Cordani, president and chief executive officer of Cigna, talks about the future of health care at the Bloomberg Invest Summit (video) (LINK)

Edge #516: Bonding with Your Algorithm - A Conversation with Nicolas Berggruen (LINK)

Decrypted Podcast: When Amazon Comes Crashing In (LINK)

Texas food delivery startup Burpy was doing well, expanding from Austin to Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. But then Amazon got in to the same business. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology’s Olivia Zaleski goes to Austin to chart one startup’s struggle to survive while going up against a tech behemoth.

Moving Animals to Safe Havens Can Unexpectedly Doom Them - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Seneca quote

From "On the Happy Life":

I shall make whatever befalls me become a good thing, but I prefer that what befalls me should be comfortable and pleasant and unlikely to cause me annoyance: for you need not suppose that any virtue exists without labour, but some virtues need spurs, while others need the curb. As we have to check our body on a downward path, and to urge it to climb a steep one; so also the path of some virtues leads downhill, that of others uphill. Can we doubt that patience, courage, constancy, and all the other virtues which have to meet strong opposition, and to trample Fortune under their feet, are climbing, struggling, winning their way up a steep ascent? Why! is it not equally evident that generosity, moderation, and gentleness glide easily downhill? With the latter we must hold in our spirit, lest it run away with us: with the former we must urge and spur it on.

Links

"If I go through my career, there's a lot of disappointments; there's a lot of things that didn't go right. But those aren't the things that make you. It's how you bounce back, and where you move on from there—and what you learn from those things. It's kind of 'the river flows'.... You have to make choices on where your life goes, but you never stop flowing. You never stop riding the river.... You kind of keep pushing forward, because you're going to have disappointments, you're going to have problems in your life, you're going to have different things that go wrong, but that's not what's going to define you. What's going to define you is how you recover from those things and how you move on." --David Tepper

David Tepper at Carnegie Mellon (videos) [H/T @LongShortTrader] (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Inertia: The Force That Holds the Universe Together (LINK)

You Are Not Alone: The Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting - by Jason Zweig (LINK)

Related book: The Warren Buffett Shareholder: Stories from inside the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

Amazon: Glimpses of Shoeless Joe? - by Aswath Damodaran (LINK)

Tokenized Securities and the Future of Ownership (LINK)

Nature's Mechanical Secrets Could Help Build Faster Robots [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Exponent Podcast: Episode 149 — Zillow and Sustaining Aggregation (LINK)

How I Built This Podcast -- Panera Bread/Au Bon Pain: Ron Shaich (LINK)

The Investors Podcast: Mastermind Discussion 2nd Q 2018 w/ Jesse Felder & Tobias Carlisle (LINK)

Farewell, No. 16: scientists left 'miserable' after world's oldest spider dies aged 43 [H/T David] (LINK)

The arachnid is believed to have survived for so long by sticking to one protected burrow its entire life and expending the minimum of energy.

TED Talk: Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers | Steven Pinker (LINK)

Related book: Enlightenment Now

The next epidemic is coming. Here’s how we can make sure we’re ready. - By Bill Gates (LINK)

What Bill Gates Fears Most - by Ed Yong (LINK)

"It is above all things necessary to form a true estimate of oneself, because as a rule we think that we can do more than we are able." --Seneca

Links

"Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day." --E. B. White [Source]

The End of Windows - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

How do wars affect stock prices? (LINK)

Mutual Fund Observer, April 2018 (LINK)

Charley Grant, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, on the Hidden Forces podcast discussing Tesla (LINK)

How to Serve a Deranged Tyrant, Stoically - by Ryan Holiday (LINK)

Books of the day:

Letters of Note: Volume 1

Letters of Note: Volume 2

Links

"If you want to be a clever person, you have to learn how to ask cleverly, how to listen attentively, how to respond quietly, and how to stop talking when there is nothing more to say." -Leo Tolstoy (A Calendar of Wisdom)

The Wrong Side of Right (LINK)

Thousands of rail workers back at Buffett's BNSF as volumes rise [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated - by Adam Grant (LINK)

Uber's New CEO - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Benedict Evans talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the future of cars (podcast) (LINK)

Dan Egan from Betterment on the Capital Allocators podcast (LINK)

Chastised by E.U., a Resentful Greece Embraces China’s Cash and Interests [H/T @manualofideas] (LINK)

Amazon Cuts Whole Foods Prices as Much as 43% on First Day (video plays) (LINK)

A Stoic’s Key to Peace of Mind: Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety (LINK)

"Many stupid things are uttered by people whose only motivation is to say something original. " -Voltaire

Practice and Training

"That’s why the philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with mere learning, but to add practice and then training. For as time passes we forget what we learned and end up doing the opposite, and hold opinions the opposite of what we should." -Epictetus (via The Daily Stoic)

"The person who has practiced philosophy as a cure for the self becomes great of soul, filled with confidence, invincible—and greater as you draw near." -Seneca (via The Daily Stoic)

The above quotes reminded me of Charlie Munger's Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency from his "The Psychology of Human Misjudgment" speech. Why take the time to develop and curate a philosophy — on life, investing, diet/health, etc. — if one isn't going to practice it on a constant basis? As Munger wrote in his speech: 

All skills attenuate with disuse. I was a whiz at calculus until age twenty, after which the skill was soon obliterated by total nonuse. The right antidote to such a loss is to make use of the functional equivalent of the aircraft simulator employed in pilot training. This allows a pilot to continuously practice all of the rarely used skills that he can’t afford to lose. 

Throughout his life, a wise man engages in practice of all his useful, rarely used skills, many of them outside his discipline, as a sort of duty to his better self. If he reduces the number of skills he practices and, therefore, the number of skills he retains, he will naturally drift into error from man with a hammer tendency. His learning capacity will also shrink as he creates gaps in the latticework of theory he needs as a framework for understanding new experience. It is also essential for a thinking man to assemble his skills into a checklist that he routinely uses. Any other mode of operation will cause him to miss much that is important. 

Skills of a very high order can be maintained only with daily practice. The pianist Paderewski once said that if he failed to practice for a single day, he could notice his performance deterioration and that, after a week’s gap in practice, the audience could notice it as well. 

The hard rule of Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency tempers its harshness for the diligent. If a skill is raised to fluency, instead of merely being crammed in briefly to enable one to pass some test, then the skill (1) will be lost more slowly and (2) will come back faster when refreshed with new learning. These are not minor advantages, and a wise man engaged in learning some important skill will not stop until he is really fluent in it.

And specifically in regards to investing, Tren Griffin added this in his book on Charlie Munger:

To be a successful investor, a person must regularly devote the necessary time and effort. Even if you once felt that you knew a lot about investing, it does not mean your skills are current. Maintaining a circle of competence requires constant work and diligence.

Seneca quote (seize the day)

Via The Daily Stoic:

“Let us therefore set out whole-heartedly, leaving aside our many distractions and exert ourselves in this single purpose, before we realize too late the swift and unstoppable flight of time and are left behind. As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession. We must seize what flees.” -Seneca

Being useful...

"The purpose of life is not to be happy.  It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The duty of a man is to be useful to his fellow-men; if possible, to be useful to many of them; failing this, to be useful to a few; failing this, to be useful to his neighbours, and, failing them, to himself: for when he helps others, he advances the general interests of mankind. Just as he who makes himself a worse man does harm not only to himself but to all those to whom he might have done good if he had made himself a better one, so he who deserves well of himself does good to others by the very fact that he is preparing what will be of service to them." -Seneca ("On Leisure")

Links

Why United (and all of Big Air) is resistant to disruption despite an offering that sucks - by Sangeet Paul Choudary (LINK)

I’ve had several discussions with logistics and transportation execs over the last month and have repeatedly seen how much the industry depends on network effects to drive supply side economies of scale. The very factors that make platforms work are already at work in these industries.  

In my latest article, I use the lens of networks and platforms to look at how the airline industry favours a winner-takes-most dynamic by building supply side economies of scale. There are important lessons here for those building platforms to exploit demand side economies of scale, as well as for pipeline companies that operate global supply chains and are digitizing them. 

There are important lessons here for understanding asset-heavy businesses. We often tend to dismiss asset-heavy businesses saying asset-light ones will disrupt them. That is lazy thinking. If anything, Amazon is so successful not just because it’s a data company but also because it is asset-intensive on the supply side to the point of leasing access to those assets out as a service, first through AWS, then through Fulfilment by Amazon, and now with logistics. As pipelines move towards platforms, we will see more of the Amazon model than the Facebook or Google or Uber model. Pipelines won’t reject assets. They will, instead, complement their asset intensity with data network effects and utilize these assets better. 

Think Different and Better - by Ian Cassel (LINK)

Invest Like the Best podcast: The Bet with Buffett – Hedge Funds vs. The S&P 500, w/ Ted Seides (LINK)

The Absolute Return Letter, May 2017: Investment Rules (LINK)

Mutual Fund Observer, May 2017 (LINK)

Seneca on Grief and the Key to Resilience in the Face of Loss: An Extraordinary Letter to His Mother (LINK)

Robert Sapolsky Explains Human Behavior (LINK)

Related book (released today): Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst - by Robert M. Sapolsky [Book review HERE.]

Declassified nuclear weapon test footage is scientifically fascinating and existentially terrifying (LINK)

Links

"It's better to travel than arrive." -Robert Pirsig

Warren Buffett's money managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, speak (video) (LINK)

Breaking Bread with Warren Buffett [H/T Linc] (LINK)

You’re Too Busy. You Need a ‘Shultz Hour.’ [H/T @jasonzweigwsj] (LINK)

Jeff Bezos speaks on Thinking Long-Term, Customer Focus, and Innovation [Some key thoughts from a couple of previous interviews.] (LINK)

Staying Competitive as the World Changes - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

The Hedge Fund Manager Who’s Shorting America’s Malls (LINK)

Exponent Podcast: Episode 112 — It’s Complicated (LINK)

Ben and James discuss whether or not monopolies are good, the differences between education and healthcare, and how to build an economy of the future.

McSquared - The Coming War between Trump & The Fed (video) [H/T @cullenroche] (LINK)

Introducing a new series of economic cartoons by the two Mc's - McCulley & McWilliams. What happens when Trump drops the mother of all policy bombs on the Fed? Who's going to win this war, what will the US economy look like in it's aftermath & what does it mean for markets? 

FT Alphachat podcast: Tyler Cowen's stubborn attachments (LINK)

Economist and polymathic author Tyler Cowen talks to Cardiff about his essay, "Stubborn Attachments", in which he shares his vision for a free and prosperous society - and the philosophical foundations necessary to build it.

Scientists Can Now Pull the DNA of Ancient Humans Out of Cave Dirt - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Massimo Pigliucci on Seneca’s Stoic philosophy of happiness (LINK)

Today's Audible Daily Deal ($4.95): Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future - by Ashlee Vance