Founder @ Vision Capital Fund. Investor, author, angel. Invest in companies that reflect our best vision for our future. Musings on investing, business & life.
I am thrilled to announce the launch of Vision Capital Fund, which has been in the making for over seven years.
We are focused on growing wealth for generations by delivering outstanding long-term investment returns from investing in exceptional companies that best reflect our
𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻 𝗕𝘂𝗳𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗸𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝘁𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗿𝘆, 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝗱𝗮𝘆.
"Coke does not have a “taste memory".
In other words, the taste of Coke doesn’t accumulate in your mouth.
Warren Buffett on buying stocks when interest rates are high.
“The best time to buy stocks…has been when interest rates were sky high and it looked like a very safe thing to do to put your money into Treasury bills…
…as attractive as that appeared, it was exactly the wrong
Eric Schmidt on NVIDIA:
Why is Nvidia worth $2 trillion and the other companies are struggling?
Technical answer. I mean, I think it just boils down to, like, most of code needs to run with CUDA optimizations that currently only Nvidia GPU supports.
Other companies can make
Sharing my latest article - "Berkshire Hathaway - The World’s Greatest Serial Acquirer of Businesses". $BRK
What became apparent was that Buffett and Munger with Berkshire were not just great investors, but also great serial acquirers.
Sharing the flywheel of Berkshire. Enjoy!
Apple $AAPL having 14% of global smartphone volumes, but earns 42% share of revenues and 80% of operating profits.
“You don’t have to be a winner takes all, you just have to be a winner that makes the most.”
𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗶𝗲 𝗠𝘂𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗻 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲.
“In this world I think we have two kinds of knowledge: One is Planck knowledge, that of the people who really know. They've paid the dues, they have the aptitude.
Then we've got chauffeur knowledge. They have learned to
This chart of ROIC-WACC spread through the corporate life cycle by
@mjmauboussin
makes me think a lot.
It is more important to think about how much a company can expand its ROIC-WACC spread through its competitive advantage to its terminal rate, and if it can keep reinvesting
𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗥𝗢𝗜𝗖 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗦𝗥 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗲𝗹 𝗠𝗮𝘂𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻’𝘀
@mjmauboussin
𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝘆 𝗳𝗮𝘃𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗶𝘁.
➡️ What happens if an investor bought stocks in each of the highest to lowest ROIC
So beautiful from Charlie Munger:
“It's so simple: you spend less than you earn. Invest shrewdly. Avoid toxic people and toxic activities. Try to keep learning all your life. And do a lot of deferred gratification.
If you do all those things, you are almost certain to succeed.
Present value vs Future value.
When I first learnt about investing, it was what price one could pay now, versus the present value for a businesses by discounting all its expected future free cash flows, and to determine if it was cheap or expensive, and if it made sense to
Volatility is the toll we pay, and have to endure to invest in stocks.
Frequency of S&P 500 declines (1928-2023)
3% decline - 7 times a year
5% decline - 3 times a year
10% decline - 1 time a year
15% decline - Once every 2 years
20% decline - Once every 3-4 years
Chart
Peter Lynch in 1997:
1) Don’t buy options, time works against you.
2) Don’t invest on margin, a market drop can wipe you out.
3) Don’t buy “cheap” stocks just because they’re cheap, buy improving fundamentals.
4) Don’t buy long shots, they usually backfire or become no shots.
The highest of cloud software spending priorities continues to be in the following top 4 categories:
1) Cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP)
2) Data warehouses (Snowflake)
3) Security (Zscaler, CrowdStrike)
4) Apps (Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday)
“Three years ago, I spoke of a dream of Sea becoming a 100 billion dollar company. Having achieved that, I now want us to dream bigger… in the next twelve years, I believe we can become a one trillion dollar company.”
- Sea’s $SE 12th Birthday Note (8May21)
1) Sharing my Investment Philosophy:
📖 My book “Vision Investing: How We Beat Wall Street & You Can, Too!” documents it all.
🌏 Invested via my own portfolio in Vision Capital () +234% vs S&P+55% (Nov20)
~4 years >80 stocks.
24 takeaways from one of the world’s best investor few heard of - Shelby Cullom Davis (23% CAGR over 47 years) via “The Davis Dynasty” and many more…
1 | He started fairly late, and did it all with his own capital
Shelby Davis quits at age 38 in 1947 with $50,000 seed capital
Sea Limited’s $SE Shopee is the top e-commerce in Southeast Asia (SEA) with US$47.9bn of total US$99.5bn e-commerce GMV (from top 9 platforms) with ~48% market share, and is No. 1 across all SEA countries.
Alibaba’s $BABA Lazada is 2nd at US$20.1bn with ~20% market share.
-
Crazy story of how TSMC became the manufacturer of NVIDIA’s chips - Because all the sales people ignored them, Jensen Huang wrote a physical letter to Morris Chang in Taiwan, and Morris called him back.
Excellent article from Michael Mauboussin
@mjmauboussin
as always on “Increasing Returns Identifying Forms of Increasing Returns and What Drives Them”
As we shift from more tangible to intangible assets/investments, the way we think about intangibles in important:
1 |
Airlines having low ROIC and high volatility of returns.
And that’s why we don’t like airline businesses.
Freight forwarders on the other hand look interesting, high returns and low volatility of returns. Any good ones?
🇯🇵 Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway investment in the 5 Japanese commodity companies is a master class in carry-trade structuring 🏆🏆
Berkshire Hathaway needed to fund the JPY-denominated stock investments of the 5 large Japanese commodity trading companies, Itochu, Marubeni,
Charlie Munger on Physics.
“So people want to find some formula. It's what I call "physics envy." These people want the world to be like physics.
But the world isn't like physics, outside of physics. And that false precision just does nothing but get you in trouble.”
Sharing my 28 key takeaways from attending Markel’s 2023 Brunch in Omaha $MKL with Tom Gayner and the management team:
𝟭 | 𝗙𝗶𝘅𝗲𝗱 𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀.
Treasuries, govies, agencies, highly rated. Disciplined in matching asset vs liabilities. Accounting
Smiling! 😀
That's what
@ChatGPTapp
@perplexity_ai
@gmail
&
@googlechrome
retention curves have in common. Smiling retention curves are rare - users are returning after initially churning!
Full analysis: apoorv03 dot com
𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗥𝗢𝗜𝗖 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗦𝗥 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗲𝗹 𝗠𝗮𝘂𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻’𝘀
@mjmauboussin
𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝘆 𝗳𝗮𝘃𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗶𝘁.
➡️ What happens if an investor bought stocks in each of the highest to lowest ROIC
Charlie Munger’s biggest takeaway from William Green’s book, “Richer, Wiser, Happier” - a lot of the mentioned great investors got divorced.
A deep reminder that as much as we tend to be high focused and consumed with our work, and that it demands up to be unemotional with our
In honor of
#CharlieMunger
, I recorded a special episode of the
#RicherWiserHappier
podcast. It features stories of my interactions with him, along with wonderful insights from 4 investors:
@MohnishPabrai
, Chris Davis, Tom Gayner & Joel Greenblatt. Listen:
This sharing by Ian Cassel
@iancassel
in “The Skills of Stock Picking” gets me thinking a lot:
As stock pickers, we cannot let the market scare the boldness out of us as we age, alongside the growing fund size we manage over time.
We need to keep evolving, keep growing, never
Warren Buffet writing about GEICO back in December 1951 - “The Security I Like Best”:
1) It was growing very rapidly, and reinvesting.
2) It was profitable, and much more than its peers.
3) It was cheap, ~8X PE on 1950 depressed earnings.
4) High Insider Ownership: ~33%
Great life and career advice from Michael Mauboussin
@mjmauboussin
which I second and always share:
Always be learning, always be curious.
Find out what you are good at, how you add value, and it must be what you enjoy, and follow your passion.
GEICO & Buffett.
In 1950, GEICO was 75% of then 20-year old Warren Buffett’s $9,800 investment portfolio.
This was after learning from Lorimer Davidson (“Davy”) about insurance and GEICO for 4 hours.
Source: 2010 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letter
One powerful action. 🤯
Three tables/charts that caught my attention in Michael Mauboussin’s
@mjmauboussin
latest piece, “Valuation Multiples What They Miss, Why They Differ, and the Link to Fundamentals”
1 | For the same EBITDA, companies with lower DA, higher EBIT should have higher EV/EBITDA
Traits of Great vs Lousy Investment Funds.
In my quest to think about what goes into creating a great investment fund, I thought deeply of what goes into a lousy one instead and to invert as Charlie Munger says.
This will get us closer to avoiding what is lousy, and do what is
Sharing 4 interesting charts on China 🇨🇳over the last ~30 years and some thoughts:
1) China’s GDP grew ~30X from 1993 to 2022
2) But China’s stock market (proxied by MSCI China) went nowhere, and is actually lower than before
3) That’s because MSCI China’s Earnings per
𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻 𝗕𝘂𝗳𝗳𝗲𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲.
“The question on discount rates…I mean in theory — we would use the same discount rate across all securities, because if you really knew the cash they were going to produce, you know, that
Intrigued by what’s going on at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Financial Group $SIVB over the recent days, I wanted to go back to primary sources, and figure out on my own what seemed to have happened instead of reading secondary sources…
Here’s some of my findings below…🧵
Shopee $SE looks to be track to eclipse Alibaba’s $BABA entire international e-commerce business by 2022 (Aliexpress, Lazada, Trendyol & Daraz).
Looking forward! 💪🏻
𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗮𝘄𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗰𝗸 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝘀.
Top 40 companies generated cumulative ~40% of total lifetime shareholder wealth creation.
Top 10 companies generated cumulative ~20% of total lifetime shareholder wealth creation.
A small minority of companies /
Love this 70-20-10 rule by Bill Smead shared by John Rotonti
@JRogrow
!
One of my favorite blogs you've written was on "The 70-20-10 Rule." Can you please explain the rule to our readers?
SC: Part 1 of the rule says that over 12 months, the return you get on a stock is 70%
“Never forget the six-foot-tall man who drowned crossing the river that was five feet deep on average.” - Howard Marks
It is not sufficient to survive the average market decline, but to be able to survive through all market declines.
Your CAPEX is my opportunity…
Selected commentary from the most recent Q1 earnings calls from “AMMA” - Amazon, Microsoft, Meta & Alphabet:
1 | Amazon $AMZN:
We expect the combination of AWS' reaccelerating growth and high demand for gen AI to meaningfully increase YoY
𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴.
Some of the most costly mistakes of the best investors had often been selling their winners too soon, and often due to too high valuations.
Selling and attempting to market time, only increases the number of decisions to be made, and a higher likelihood
Sea limited’s $SE Shopee still continues to be the top dog by GMV in Southeast Asia e-commerce after Alibaba’s $BABA Lazada according to Momentum Work’s latest 2023 report.
Over the last 170 years…while US Real GDP per capital went up 20X:
- 99.9% of all companies that were created went out of business.
- 33 recessions lasted a cumulative 48 years.
- The number of forecasters who predicted any of those recessions rounds to zero.
- The stock
Reflecting on 2020 with 40 Lessons on Investing and Life. Below are my reflections for 2020 in my investing journey, I hope by sharing, it might help you in many ways as it did for me as well. Here goes…👇🏻
Markets seemingly rotating from “growth” to “value” companies, because they are focused on “higher growth rates” off lower comps due to COVID decline. After some time, when they realise they are stuck with the same slow growing ones, they will eventually come back. Be patient.
Adam Mead
Buffett has been surprisingly bold at certain times in his career
Back in 1969, he acquired Illinois National Bank & Trust with 44% of Berkshire's equity
A little known fact, dug up by the deep research of
@BRK_Student
slides:
🧵 Sharing 43 of my favorite takeaways from the most
@AcquiredFM
Podcast of NVIDIA $NVDA: The Dawn of the AI Era with David Rosenthal
@djrosent
and Ben Gilbert
@gilbert
!
Thought it was a smashing podcast with a great balance of history, explanation, context, and well balanced
Great thoughts by Howard Marks in his most recent memo, “Taking the Temperature” about buying and selling, which we share similar views as well.
“If we’re happy to vary our risk posture, then what does it mean when we say, “we’re not market timers”? For me, it means the
Buffett clearly understands and appreciates power laws in investing.
“In 58 years of Berkshire management, most of my capital-allocation decisions have been no better than so-so. In some cases, also, bad moves by me have been rescued by very large doses of luck.
Our
Love these 5 things that Bernard Arnault of LVMH did:
1) Being highly detail-oriented
2) Spotting any things that he can fix
3) Having fun every day
4) Never be complacent, not wanting to hear good news
5) Empower and back them up when you come across talent
Last week a rare interview with Bernard Arnault came out
I read it 3 times, loved it, and decided to make an episode about it. Available in your podcast app now!