Links

"There's no such thing as a value company. Price is all that matters. At some price, an asset is a buy, at another it's a hold, and at another it's a sell." --Seth Klarman

Buffett Lieutenant to Head Berkshire Hathaway’s Geico Insurance Unit ($) (LINK)

Todd Combs to succeed Bill Roberts, who will retire at the end of 2020

In his 2019 Annual Book Review [Chinese], Li Lu recommends The Other Half of Macroeconomics and the Fate of Globalization. [H/T @mastersinvest] 

Is China Beating America to AI Supremacy? - by Graham Allison (LINK)

Amazon Advertising, Explained (LINK)

Banks Own Thousands of Railcars but Don't Know What to Do With Them ($) (LINK)

A Sea Change in Fuel Prices Is Imminent ($) (LINK)

January’s deadline to use cleaner marine fuel could ripple through the global fuel market on land and sea

Martin Stopford at the 2019 Hong Kong Maritime Forum - Where We Are in the Shipping Cycle Today (video) (LINK)

Related book: Maritime Economics - by Martin Stopford

Hyman Minsky explains financial fragility in his own words (November 1987 video) [H/T Ritholtz] (LINK)

We’ve just had the best decade in human history. Seriously - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

Grant’s Current Yield Podcast: Winter reading (LINK)

Related book: Great Society: A New History - by Amity Shlaes

Wall Street Unplugged Podcast: The best value ideas for 2020 [with Jonathan Boyar] (LINK)

The Tim Ferriss Show (podcast): #403: Tony Fadell — On Building the iPod, iPhone, Nest, and a Life of Curiosity (LINK)

The Knowledge Project Podcast: #72 Neil Pasricha: Happy Habits (LINK)

How a 35,000-Year-Old Frozen Woolly Mammoth Tastes (LINK)

Why You Never Have Time - by Derek Thompson (LINK)

The Two Kinds of Moderate - by Paul Graham (LINK)

Fashionable Problems - by Paul Graham (LINK)

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"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

"We generally look at businesses and believe that change is likely to work against us. We do not think we have great ability to predict where change is going to lead. We think we have some ability to find businesses where we don't think change is going to be very important." -Warren Buffett (1996 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, via Outstanding Investor Digest)

Meet the billionaire whisperer who united Bezos, Buffett and Dimon (LINK)

Mohnish Pabrai Lecture at Peking University (Guanghua School of Mgmt) - Dec 22, 2017 (video) (LINK)

The Rise and Fall of Circuit City (LINK)

Special Commentary from FPA: Rare Bond Market Conditions Set Up Complacent Investors for Subpar Returns (LINK)

How Astronauts Build Trust (WorkLife with Adam Grant Podcast) (LINK)

Divided by DNA: The uneasy relationship between archaeology and ancient genomics (LINK)

Links

10 Questions for Todd Combs [H/T Market Folly] (LINK)

Inside Texas’s largest furniture store [H/T @NicoleFriedman] (LINK)

Ray Dalio on Bitcoin (LINK) [This video was a clip from the Milken conference a few weeks ago, of which you can find more videos from that event, as well as last week's London event, HERE. The full Conversation between Ray Dalio and Michael Milken is HERE.]

Mark Cuban In Conversation With Kyle Bass | Real Vision Video (LINK)

The implosion in digital media. What are the implications? (LINK)

A New Kind of Soft Battery, Inspired by the Electric Eel - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Turning Piglets Into Personalized Avatars for Sick Kids - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Book of the day [H/T @farnamstreet]: A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

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