Links

Warren Buffett shares his opinion on China, Costco, Elon Musk, College, and more (video) (LINK) [This appears to be the complete video interview from earlier this year, in which Yahoo Finance had previously released some shorter clips.]

Robin Hood has put up some videos from conferences over the years [Tepper, Druckenmiller, Einhorn, etc.] (LINK)

Blue Sky - some notes and an agenda for ASIC - by John Hempton (LINK)

Flying Blind - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

The Funds That Make You Buy Low and Sell High - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

Venture-Capital Stalwart Battles Washington’s Crypto Crackdown ($) (LINK)

Andreessen Horowitz, known for Facebook investment, says digital currencies can cure what ails web

The Investor’s Podcast: TIP258: Current Market Conditions and Value Investing w/ Tobias Carlisle (LINK)

The most dangerous thing about the Amazon fires is the apocalyptic rhetoric - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

The Opportunity Paradox (LINK)

The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness (LINK)

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

The difference between a good business and a bad business...

From Charlie Munger during the 1998 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting:

I’ve heard Warren say since very early in his life that the difference between a good business and a bad business is usually the good business just throws up one easy decision after another, whereas the bad business gives you a horrible choice where the decision is hard to make. Is this really going to work? Is it worth the money? 

If you want a system for determining which is a good business and which is a bad business, just see which one is throwing the management bloopers time after time after time. Easy decisions.

It’s not very hard for us to decide to open a new See’s store in a new shopping center in California that’s obviously going to succeed. It’s a blooper. 

On the other hand, there are plenty of businesses where the decisions that come across your desk are just awful. And those businesses, by and large, don’t work very well.

Links

"Investment success depends on buying into the right businesses at the right price. And you have to know how to value businesses, and you have to have an attitude that divorces you from being influenced by the market." --Warren Buffett (2008)

The Broyhill 2019 Mid-Year Letter (LINK)

Scion Asset Management Urges GameStop to Buy Back $238 Million of Stock with Cash on Hand (LINK)

An open letter to James Dolan about unlocking shareholder value at Madison Square Garden (LINK)

Privacy Fundamentalism - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Wait Buy Why: The Story of Us - by Tim Urban (LINK)

Capital Allocators Podcast: Eric Ries – Lean Start-Ups and the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LINK)

Odd Lots Podcast: How to Forecast the Future (LINK)

Land of the Giants Podcast: Is Amazon Too Big? We Ask Its Sellers (LINK)

Acquired Podcast: Google Maps (LINK)

Venture Stories Podcast: What Venkat Rao Thinks About Basically Everything (LINK)

EconTalk Podcast: Andrew Roberts on Churchill and the Craft of Biography (LINK)

Related book: Churchill: Walking with Destiny

The Art of Manliness Podcast: #537: How to Think Like a Roman Emperor (LINK)

Related book: How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

The Peter Attia Drive Podcast: #68 - Marty Makary, M.D.: The US healthcare system—why it’s broken, steps to fix it, and how to protect yourself (LINK)

How Komodo Dragons Survived Extinction as Other Giant Reptiles Went Extinct (LINK)

Here’s a question you should ask about every climate change plan - by Bill Gates (LINK)

Links

"If we could guess successfully a high percentage of the time where the stock market was going to go, we would do nothing but play the S&P futures market. There wouldn’t be any reason to look at businesses and stocks. It’s just not our game. What we see when we look at the stock market is we see thousands and thousands and thousands of companies priced every day, and we ignore 99.9 percent of what we see, although we run our eyes over them. And then every now and then we see something that looks like it’s attractively priced to us, as a business. Forget about the word 'stock.' So when we buy a stock, we would be happy with that stock if they told us the market was going to close for a couple years. We look to the business." --Warren Buffett (2008)

Cliff Asness on why it's hard to say when value wins again (LINK) [“A huge part of our job is building a great investment process that will make money over the long term, but a fair amount of our job is sticking to it like grim death during the tougher times.”]

How Elon Musk Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity - by Bethany McLean (LINK)

Streaming Video Will Soon Look Like the Bad Old Days of TV - by Matthew Ball (LINK)

China's Hong Kong Dilemma - by Evan Osnos (LINK)

The Acquirers Podcast: Ian Cassel chats with Tobias Carlisle (LINK)

The Investor’s Podcast: Small Cap Investing - w/ Eric Cinnamond (LINK)

Flux Podcast: 24: Matt Cauble—Soylent’s Co-Founder Goes After Alcohol (LINK)

Radiolab Podcast: Right to be Forgotten (LINK)

Attachment Theory - by Mark Manson (LINK)

Links

"The job of the board of directors is to have the right CEO. I mean, if you’ve got the right CEO, 90 percent of it takes care of itself. If you were the director of Cap Cities and you had Tom Murphy as the CEO, case closed. It was all you needed. And if you have that CEO, I think you have an obligation on the board to make sure that there’s not overreaching by the CEO, because the CEO can have different interests. And I think the third thing that the board should do is they really should bring some independent judgment in on major acquisitions. Because there is a natural tendency for people with, usually, big egos, big motors, who get to be CEOs that like to do big things and to become bigger spending other people’s money.... So I think in those three respects, a good director will first make an affirmative decision [that] you’ve got a very good CEO — not the best in the whole world, not everybody can do that — but a very good CEO. That that CEO is not overreaching. And when significant deals come along, that they get a chance to weigh in, and that you really get a balanced discussion about the real economics of what you’re doing." --Warren Buffett (2007)

The Long View Podcast -- Rob Arnott: Don’t Sleep on Value Investing (LINK)

RA Conversations: The Inverted Yield Curve and Stock Returns (video) (LINK)

Cam Harvey explains the link between the yield curve inversion and future stock returns as well as why value offers investors a potential hedge against downside risk after a yield curve inversion.  

The risks grow that the passive and algorithmic transformation of equity markets could lead to a crisis. (LINK)

The Meb Faber Show: #171 - Raoul Pal - Buy Bonds. Buy Dollars. Wear Diamonds. (LINK)

The Art of Manliness Podcast: How to Achieve a “Rich Life” With Your Finances [with Ramit Sethi] (LINK)

Related book: I Will Teach You to Be Rich

The Stephen Wolfram Podcast: A Very Brief History of Mathematics [H/T @nntaleb] (LINK)

Revisionist History Podcast: The Obscure Virus Club (LINK)

Venture Stories Podcast: The Most Well-Read Person in the World on The Future of Reading with Robert Cottrell (LINK)

Audiobooks or Reading? To Our Brains, It Doesn’t Matter (LINK)

What If I Said No? (And Other Questions to Consider Daily) - by Ryan Holiday (LINK)

A Simple Invention Could Change How Fast Disease Is Detected - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Book of the day: The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West - by David McCullough

Links

"We don’t try to buy our businesses with thoughts much of world trends. We certainly think in terms of foreign competition. I mean, we do not want to buy into a business that has a very high labor content and that has a product that can be shipped in from abroad very easily.... You do not want to have something whose competitive position is going to erode over time." --Warren Buffett (2007)

Berkshire Hathaway Energy Presentation (LINK)

Why Complexity Sells - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Peter Barton: Oral and Video Collection Interview [H/T Sean Iddings/Intelligent Fanatics] (LINK)

Related book: Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived

Thinking aloud about bank margins - Part 2 - by John Hempton (LINK)

The WeWork IPO - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

A short extract from a 2017 presentation by Grant Williams which highlights the madness of investors buying the 100-year Argentine bond issuance (video) (LINK)

Kyle Bass on CNBC (video) (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Joe McLean – How to be a Pro’s Pro (LINK)

Land of the Giants Podcast: How Amazon Charmed Wall Street (LINK)

Is nuking Mars a good idea? (No) - by Phil Plait (LINK)

Links

Howard Marks warns of 'dark' impact of trade war [H/T Linc] (LINK)

An Economic Warning Sign: RV Sales Are Slipping ($) (LINK)

The Network Effects Manual: 13 Different Network Effects (and counting) [H/T @ChrisPavese] (LINK)

Thinking aloud about bank margins - Part 1 - by John Hempton (LINK)

Odd Lots Podcast: John Hempton on What’s Ailing Bank Stocks (LINK)

Masters in Business Podcast: Josh Wolfe Discusses Innovative Investments (LINK)

a16z Podcast: Software has eaten the world…and healthcare is next (LINK)

EconTalk Podcast: Tyler Cowen on Big Business (LINK)

The Investor’s Podcast: TIP256: Raoul Pal - Global Financial Concerns (LINK)

Hidden Forces Podcast: Hong Kong Revolution: Geopolitical & Financial Implications for China and the World | David Webb (LINK)

A summary of The Courage to be Disliked (LINK)

Ebola outbreak spreads to third province in eastern Congo [H/T @Atul_Gawande] (LINK)

Links

“Busts are the product of booms, and I’m convinced it’s usually more correct to attribute a bust to the excesses of the preceding boom than to the specific event that sets off the correction. But most of the time there is a spark that starts the swing from bullish to bearish.” --Howard Marks (“Now What?,” January 2008)

Pershing Square's reason for buying shares in Berkshire Hathaway [pages 10-12 of report] (LINK)

John Hempton on the Markopolis GE paper (Post 1, Post 2)

Why Viacom Fell (And Why It Can Come Back) (LINK)

Pushing on a String - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

WeWork IPO Shows It’s the Most Magical Unicorn (LINK)

Everything about the company is over-the-top: its growth, losses, potential conflicts of interest and financial gymnastics.

What is We!? Understanding the WeWork IPO - by Byrne Hobart [H/T @BrentBeshore] (LINK)

The Disruptive Voice Podcast: A Jobs-To-Be-Done Masterclass with Andrew Glaser and Bob Moesta (LINK)

Revisionist History Podcast: Chutzpah vs. Chutzpah (LINK)

A Tissue Sample From 1966 Held Traces of Early HIV - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"I think it is entirely fair, as an investor, to just quitclaim certain areas of business as having too many problems." --Charlie Munger (2002)

The church of chicken: The inside story of how Chick-fil-A used Christian values and a 'clone army' to build a booming business that's defying the retail apocalypse and taking over America [H/T @zebulgar] (LINK)

Related books: 1) Covert Cows and Chick-fil-A: How Faith, Cows, and Chicken Built an Iconic Brand; 2) How Did You Do It, Truett?

New CEO Wants to Make Barnes & Noble Your Local Bookstore ($) [H/T Phil] (LINK)

The growing threat of a corporate bond market meltdown. (LINK)

Argentina's 48% Stock Rout Second-Biggest in Past 70 Years (LINK)

The surprise outcome in Argentina’s primary vote roiled the nation’s financial markets, sending the S&P Merval Index plunging 48% in dollar terms. 

That marked the second-biggest one-day rout on any of the 94 stock exchanges tracked by Bloomberg going back to 1950. Sri Lanka’s bourse tumbled more than 60% in June 1989 as the nation was engulfed in a civil war.

A Danish bank is offering mortgages with negative interest rates — why you shouldn't wish for that to happen in the U.S. [H/T Matt] (LINK)

The World’s Newest Petrostate Isn’t Ready for a Tsunami of Cash [H/T Matt] (LINK)

Storytelling with Data - by Chris Pavese (LINK)

Related book: Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Zack Kanter – All Things Business (LINK)

Ramit Sethi on the Impact Theory Podcast (video) [H/T @dollarsanddata] (LINK)

Related book: I Will Teach You to Be Rich

Land of the Giants Podcast: Why the Robot Revolution is Our Fault (LINK)

Matt Ridley chats with Steve Forbes (podcast) (LINK)

Are You Doing Microworkouts? Here's Why You Should. - by Mark Sisson (LINK)

The Anthropocene Is a Joke - by Peter Brannen (LINK)

One Giant Leap for Maggotkind - by Ed Yong (LINK)

A New Clue to How Life Originated - by Ed Yong (LINK)