Links

"In terms of generally advancing within organizations, I think you’d be surprised at how little competition you really  have if you start thinking like you would if you were an owner of the place, and working like you would if you were an owner of the place, and pretty soon you may be running something." --Warren Buffett (2010)

Armed With Swabs, Covid Hunters Stalk Their Prey - by Michael Lewis (LINK)

Michael Lewis in Conversation with Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg (podcast) (LINK)

Bronte Capital's Q1 Letter [H/T Linc] (LINK)

[There's another great collection of Q1 letters HERE.]

What Have We Learned Here? - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

The Psychology of Masks (LINK)

The Glut Drowning the Oil Market ($) (LINK)

Here’s What to Know If You Must Sign Up for Cobra Health Insurance ($) (LINK)

Cloud Gaming: Why It Matters And The Games It Will Create - by Matthew Ball & Jacob Navok (LINK)

Tom Colicchio’s Plan to Save Restaurants (LINK)

The Joe Rogan Experience (podcast): #1470 - Elon Musk (LINK)

Recode Media Podcast: Michael Jordan’s Last Dance, with director Jason Hehir (LINK)

A Much-Hyped COVID-19 Treatment Has a Weird Connection to Black-Market Cat Drugs - by Sarah Zhang (LINK)

The Problem With Stories About Dangerous Coronavirus Mutations - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. The measure of success attained by Wall Street, regarded as an institution of which the proper social purpose is to direct new investment into the most profitable channels in terms of future yield, cannot be claimed as one of the outstanding triumphs of laissez-faire capitalism which is not surprising, if I am right in thinking that the best brains of Wall Street have been in fact directed towards a different object." --John Maynard Keynes

Warren Buffett’s Optimistic? Pessimistic? No, Realistic - by Andrew Ross Sorkin (LINK)

Sam Zell on Market Valuations, Real Estate, Post-Virus Economy (video) [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Spring 2020 issue of Graham & Doddsville (LINK)

Content, Cars, and Comparisons in the "Streaming Wars" - by Matthew Ball (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Ali Hamed – An Update on Private Credit (LINK)

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

The Case for Deeply Negative Interest Rates - by Kenneth Rogoff (LINK)

MacroVoices Podcast #217 Dr. Lacy Hunt: The Road Through Deflation Toward Eventual Hyperinflation (LINK)

Hope, Through History Podcast: Episode 3 | The Polio Epidemic (LINK)

The Daily Stoic Podcast: Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Robert Greene Talk Plagues, Politics, and Polarization (LINK)

All You Need Are a Few Small Wins Every Day - by Ryan Holiday (LINK)

Our message to the class of 2020 - by Bill and Melinda Gates (LINK)

It is time to take seriously the link between Vitamin D deficiency and more serious Covid-19 symptoms - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

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

Warren Buffett and the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting 2020

Link to video

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

"If I think I can make very good money, as we did on Harley-Davidson, with a very simple decision, just a question of, 'Are they going to go broke or not?' as opposed to a tougher decision, 'Is the motorcycle market going to get diminished significantly? And, you know, are the margins going to get squeezed somewhat?' And all of that. I’ll go with a simple decision." --Warren Buffett (2010)

The Art of Survival - by Ian Cassel (video) (LINK)

Giverny Capital 2019 Annual Letter to Partners (LINK)

How Tech Can Build - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

In the Coronavirus Era, the Force Is Still With Jack Dorsey (LINK)

2015 article... That Time I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Manny Stotz - Frontier Markets Investing (LINK)

The Amish Health Care System [H/T @jtepper2] (LINK)

PBS FRONTLINE: Coronavirus Pandemic (video) (LINK)

Links

"Stocks got much cheaper in 1974 than they are now [in May 2009]. But you were also facing a different interest rate scenario. So you could say they really weren’t that much cheaper. You could buy very good companies at four times earnings or thereabouts with good prospects. But interest rates were far higher then. That was the best period I’ve ever seen for buying common equities. The country may not have been in as much trouble then as we were back in September. I don’t think it was. But stocks were somewhat cheaper then.... We don’t try to pick bottoms. We don’t have an opinion about where the stock market’s going to go tomorrow or next week or next month. So to sit around and not do something that’s sensible because you think there will be something even more attractive, that’s just not our approach to it. Anytime we get a chance to do something that makes sense, we do it. And if it makes even more sense the next day, and if we’ve got money, we may do more. And if we don’t — what can we do about it? So picking bottoms is basically not our game. Pricing is our game." --Warren Buffett (2009)

The Long View Podcast: Chris Davis: Banking on Boring, Reliable Franchises (LINK)

Easter on the Sidewalk - Jason Zweig (LINK)

Coronavirus Clarity - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Railroader - Learning from Hunter Harrison (LINK)

Walter Isaacson: This is going to be a new century of biotechnology (video) (LINK)

Venture Stories Podcast: How COVID-19 Impacts Startups and Venture Capital with Ali Hamed and Brent Beshore (LINK)

Our Pandemic Summer - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"If the business changes in a material way, you’d better change your business model. Or somebody else will. And then you’ll even have more changes facing you.... Capitalism is creative destruction. And sometimes, you’re on the short end of that." --Warren Buffett (2009)

"Some of our businesses have a shared-hardship model, where they don’t layoff, at least not yet. And the businesses with that model tend to be very strongly placed economically. So I guess it shows that Benjamin Franklin was right, when he said, 'It's hard for an empty sack to stand upright.' So we’re all over the map on that, and so is all of industry. But I do think an ideal model would be a business so strong that it could operate in the shared-hardship mode instead of the layoffs." --Charlie Munger (2009)

"Yeah, some are doing that, where you give up hours. But a lot of operations don’t lend themselves to that very well, either. So...in other cases, you basically have to close down whole plants. That’s just the nature of it. You really can’t operate every plant at 50 percent and have it work as effectively as shutting down the least-productive plants." --Warren Buffett (2009)

"In a world where you sometimes have to amputate a limb to stay alive, you can’t expect that every business can stay exactly as it is." --Charlie Munger (2009)

***

Klarman Made $1 Billion Hedging Markets. He Still Lost Money (LINK) [If anyone happens to have a copy of a Baupost quarterly update letter during this time, and is willing to share, it would be greatly appreciated (valueinvestingworld@gmail.com).]

The first 4 video replays of Grant Williams' 2020 Hmmminar Series are available online (LINK) [Marc Cohodes is the latest one from last night, and the next one is scheduled for tonight, with John Hussman.]

FUNDSMITH Annual Shareholders' Meeting - 25th February 2020 (video) (LINK)

Apple, Amazon, and Common Enemies -  by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Sarah Tavel - Consumer & Marketplace Investing (LINK)

The Daily Podcast: A Kids’ Guide to Coronavirus (LINK)

The Peter Attia Drive (podcast): #104 - COVID-19 for kids with Olivia Attia (LINK)

Recode Decode Podcast: Niall Ferguson: How viruses (and fake news stories) spread, and how America screwed up its coronavirus response (LINK)

TED Connects: Why sleep matters now more than ever | Matt Walker (video) (LINK)

The Gene | Part 1: Dawn of the Modern Age of Genetics | PBS (video) (LINK) [A Ken Burns documentary, inspired by Siddhartha Mukherjee's book The Gene.]

WHO must answer serious questions before it is trusted with leading a Covid-19 inquiry - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

The Shelves Are Empty, the Test Swabs Are Gone - by Michael Lewis (LINK)

Some of Warren Buffett’s comments on inflation over the years (LINK)

Book of the day (PDF): Dying of Money: Lessons of the Great German and American Inflations - by Jens O. Parsson

Links

"There’s always a lot of things wrong with the world. Unfortunately, it’s the only world we’ve got. So we live with it, and we deal with it. But the beauty of it is this system works very well. I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going to happen in business or markets in the next year or two years. But the one thing I know is that, over time, people will live better and better in this country. We have a system that works. It unleashes human potential. " --Warren Buffett (2009)

Berkshire Hathaway cancels the in-person shareholder events around its Annual Meeting (LINK)

The annual meeting will be held at 3:45 p.m. on May 2nd as scheduled. However, we will not be able to allow shareholders to physically attend the meeting, and all special events are canceled. 

...Yahoo has confirmed that it will stream the meeting. They have provided great coverage in the past, and you can watch what takes place in Omaha from your armchair.

Corona Panic (Part II) - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Bryan Krug – An Update on Corporate Credit (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Bill Gurley and Chetan Puttagunta – An Update on Consumer & Enterprise Venture Capital (LINK)

Exponent Podcast: 183 — A Search for Everything (LINK)

On Being with Krista Tippett (podcast): Carlo Rovelli — All Reality Is Interaction (LINK)

Related books: 1) The Order of Time; 2) Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Book Notes: Why We Get Sick (LINK)

The Last Giraffes on Earth - by Ed Yong (LINK)

The planet’s tallest animal is in far greater danger than people might think.

Links

Warren Buffett sat down with Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer to discuss the market volatility (video) (LINK)

Zero Trust Information - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Deep Basin – Oil Price War and Its Implications (LINK)

Planet MicroCap Podcast: Scott Miller, Founder of Greenhaven Road Capital (LINK)

WorkLife with Adam Grant (podcast): The Real Reason You Procrastinate (LINK)

The Joe Rogan Experience: #1439 - Michael Osterholm (LINK)

Related book: Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs

Links

"Our approach is really to try and learn vicariously. But there’s a lot of mistakes that I’ve repeated, I can tell you that. The biggest one, probably — or the biggest category over time — is being reluctant to pay up a little for a business I knew was really outstanding, or to continue to buy it at higher prices when I knew it was outstanding. The cost of that has been many, many billions. And I’ll probably keep making that mistake. The mistakes are made when there are businesses you can understand and they’re attractive and you don’t do something about it. I don’t worry at all about the mistakes that come about because when I met Bill Gates, I didn’t buy Microsoft or something. That’s not my game. Most of our mistakes have been mistakes of omission rather than commission." --Warren Buffett (1997)

The Hollywood Drama That Cost a BlackRock Fund $75 Million - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

U.S. Airlines Face Test as Epidemic Spreads ($) (LINK)

We all need to change how we live our lives to fight this generation of pandemics - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

Corona Panic - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017 article) [H/T @rationalwalk] (LINK)

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

1997 article from Malcolm Gladwell: "The Dead Zone" (LINK)

Seven bodies buried in the Arctic tundra might solve the riddle of the worst flu pandemic in history—and might help us prevent it from happening again.

Absolute Return Letter, March 2020: Five Lessons from History (2/5) (LINK)

Innovations in payments (BIS Quarterly Review) (LINK)

Stripe Teardown: How The $35B Payments Company Plans To Supercharge Online Retail [H/T @david_perell] (LINK)

The Acquirers Podcast: Passive Agro: Michael Green on the looming threat from passive indexing, shorting XIV and what value guys can do (LINK)

Hidden Forces Podcast: Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World | Peter Zeihan (LINK)

Related book: Disunited Nations

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum Podcast: EP10 Strangelove Whisperings (LINK)

Origin Stories Podcast: 41: Tribes Old and New (LINK)

The Five Revolutions in Cancer Treatment (LINK)

Jack Welch, Legendary CEO of General Electric, Dies at Age 84 (LINK)

CNBC's full interview with Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett

Link to video

Warren Buffett's 2019 Letter to Shareholders

Link to: Warren Buffett's 2019 Letter to Shareholders

Links

"The cost of every deal we do is measured by the second best deal that’s around at a given time, including doing more of some of the things we’re already in." --Warren Buffett (2001)

"Charlie and I always figure that our cost of capital is what could be produced by our second best idea. And then our best idea has to exceed that." --Warren Buffett (2014)

Twenty Years of Owning Berkshire Hathaway (LINK)

Broyhill 2019 Annual Letter (LINK)

Risk and loss aversion in ergodicity economics (LINK)

The a16z Marketplace 100 (LINK)

The Cutting Room Files, Part 7: Europe - by Peter Zeihan (LINK)

Bob Iger on The Bill Simmons Podcast (LINK)

Ben Thompson on The Bill Simmons Podcast (LINK)

The Acquirers Podcast: Dylan Grice (LINK)

Macro Voices Podcast: #206 Chris Cole: Optimizing portfolio construction for changing times [22:02 mark] (LINK)

Capital Allocators Podcast: Dan Rasmussen (LINK)

Acquired Podcast: Sequoia Capital Part II (with Doug Leone) (LINK)

Sir William Osler’s Advice to Students: Practice Concentrating on Hard Things (LINK)

The Cascading Consequences of the Worst Disease Ever - by Ed Yong (LINK)

No master plan...

From Warren Buffett at the 1997 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting: 

30 years ago we didn’t know we would be in the insurance business.  

We have no master plan. Charlie and I did not sit down in 1960 — early ’65 — and say, “We’re going to do this and that,” and all that.  

We’re going to try and do sensible things as we go along. The more money we have, the harder it is to find sensible things. But that’s the criterion.

Insurance is certainly a major area of opportunity for us. It’s been a major opportunity.  

In certain fields we have a terrific advantage for the three reasons I laid out in the annual report. We have capital strength, and a willingness to take on risk, and a speed of action, and a certainty of payment, that in aggregate no one matches.  

Now, how much demand there is for that depends on circumstances in the business and how much supply there is at lower prices that we think don’t make sense is another question. But I think we’ll do OK in insurance over time. 

From Warren Buffett at the 2001 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting: 

We don’t have a master plan. Charlie and I do not sit around and strategize or talk about the future of various industries or do anything of that sort. It just doesn’t happen. We don’t have any reports. We don’t have any staff. We don’t have any of that.  

We try to survey the whole financial field. We try to look at what comes in and look for things we understand, where we think they have a durable, competitive advantage, where we like the management, and where the price is sensible.  

We had no idea two or three years ago, that we would be the 87 percent owner of the largest broadloom carpet company in the world. 

We don’t plan these things. But I would tell you in a general way that 20 or so years from now, we will own a lot more businesses. 

...So we have no more master plan now than we had back in 1965 when we bought the textile mill, really. I mean, we had a lousy business. I didn’t realize it was as lousy as it was when I got into it. And we just had to start trying to deploy capital in an intelligent way.... That’s our business and we enjoy it.

From Charlie Munger in 2013: 

Therein lies a lesson in life. I think most lives work best when you simply react intelligently to the opportunities and difficulties you encounter, and just take the results as they fall.  

Some people think that by master planning, you will solve everything, but what I find is that the master plan gets a life of its own, and people believe it because they previously decided on that then, and they make all kinds of mistakes.  

(Thomas) Carlyle was a very smart man, and one of his favorite sayings was, the task of man is not to see what lies dimly in the distance but to do what lies clearly at hand. [Ed: actual quote: “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what clearly lies at hand.”]

Links

"I think most people get very few, what I call, no-brainer opportunities, where it’s just so damned obvious that this is going to work. And since they are very few and they may be separated by periods of years, I think people have to learn to have the courage and the intelligence to step up in a major way when those rare opportunities come by." --Charlie Munger (1997)

"Yeah. You've got to be willing to take a really big bite. And it’s crazy if you don’t. And it’s crazy if you dabble around at the edges, so you’re not prepared to take a big bite when the time comes." --Warren Buffett (1997)

Why it only costs $10k to ‘own’ a Chick-fil-A franchise [H/T @cristinagberta] (LINK)

The chicken chain is known for having the lowest entry cost of any major fast-food franchise — but there’s a catch.

Vanguard Broadens Reach With Entry Into Private Equity ($) (LINK)

Ray Dalio's response to the recent WSJ article on him and Bridgewater (LINK)

Corner Office from Marketplace (podcast): Janet Yellen and David Malpass on global economic slowdown (LINK)

1,000 True Fans? Try 100 (LINK)

Links

"Certainly opportunity cost has been much more in the forefront of mind in the last 18 months. When things are moving very fast, when both prices are moving, and in certain cases, intrinsic business value is moving at a pace that’s far greater than we’ve seen for a long time, it means that in terms of calibrating A versus B, versus C, it’s tougher. It’s more interesting. It’s more challenging. And it can be way more profitable, too. But it’s a different task then when everything was moving at a more leisurely pace." --Warren Buffett (2009)

The Illusory Truth Effect: Why We Believe Fake News, Conspiracy Theories and Propaganda (LINK)

Facebook’s Platform Opportunity - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

AQR Says to Get Sober About Future Returns (LINK)

How Private Equity Buried Payless (LINK)

The Long Buy - by Fred Wilson (LINK)

Is CPG Doomed? (LINK)

The Absolute Return Letter, February 2020: Five Lessons from History (LINK)

Mutual Fund Observer, February 2020 (LINK)

Small Caps: Finding Great Companies (video/podcast, from about 3 years ago) (LINK)

The Acquirers Podcast: Private Value: Jonathan Boyar (LINK)

EconTalk (podcast): Robert Shiller on Narrative Economics (LINK)

Related book: Narrative Economics

The Peter Attia Drive (podcast): #91 – Eric Topol, M.D.: Can AI empower physicians and revolutionize patient care? (LINK)

11 Reasons Not to Become Famous (or “A Few Lessons Learned Since 2007”) - by Tim Ferriss (LINK)

You Can Vote. But You Can’t Choose What Is True. - by Yuval Noah Harari ($) (LINK)

Qassem Suleimani and How Nations Decide to Kill - by Adam Entous and Evan Osnos (LINK)

The New Coronavirus Is a Truly Modern Epidemic - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Book of the day (recommended by Christopher Davis): Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

Links

"Part of investing and calculating intrinsic values is if you get the wrong answer when you get through [doing the work] — in other words, if it says don’t buy, you can’t buy just because somebody else thinks it’s going to go up or because your friends have made a lot of easy money lately or anything of the sort. You just have to be able to walk away from anything that doesn’t work.... You also have to walk away from anything you don’t understand." --Warren Buffett (1997)

Being a Noob - by Paul Graham (LINK)

Michael Mauboussin's Spring 2020 Security Analysis Course Syllabus (LINK)

Horizon Kinetics: 4th Quarter 2019 Commentary (LINK)

The Economist as Scapegoat - by Russ Roberts (LINK)

Tech in 2020: Standing on the shoulders of giants - by Benedict Evans (LINK)

On Bill Gurley’s Above the Crowd (LINK)

Access to all the Videos from Stoicon 2019 in Athens (LINK)

Links

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martin Capital Management 2019 Annual Report (LINK)

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

The Tragic iPad - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Different Kinds of Easy - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

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

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

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

Acquired Podcast: WhatsApp (LINK)

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

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

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

Links

"We’re more reluctant to sell [stocks we own] than most people. I mean, if we made the right decision going [in], we like to ride that a very long time. And we’ve owned some stocks for decades. But if the competitive advantage disappears, if we really lose faith in the management, if we were wrong in the original analysis — and that happens — we sell. Or if we find something more attractive." --Warren Buffett (2009)

Sit On Your Ass Investment Management (LINK)

My $2 Million Apple Mistake (LINK)

Peter Thiel calls for improving research grant, regulatory processes to enhance scientific innovation (LINK)

Today's issue of the Sinocism newsletter is out from behind the paywall....  Wuhan virus; US-China; Huawei and the UK - by Bill Bishop (LINK)

Four Trends in Consumer Tech (LINK)

Peter Attia interviews Sam Zell [on Tim Ferriss' podcast] (LINK)

Related book: Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel

Freakonomics Radio (podcast): The Opioid Tragedy, Part 2: “It’s Not a Death Sentence” (LINK)

There’s a Perfectly Good Reason to Mass-Produce Snake Venom - by Ed Yong (LINK)