#103 - Ramblings Dec2023

Charlie Munger: The Last Interview

Pick an idea. Take it very seriously.

Charlie’s idea was compounding.

One interpretation of it is:

Compound positive outcomes by doing what you do best - and only that.

Audio: link.

A Beautiful Interview (in French)

Marie-Estelle Dupont: 2 grands facteurs permettent au pouvoir de dominer les masses.

Education Sexuelle à l’école

L’éducation sexuelle, parent pauvre du programme scolaire (archive).

Some pretty appalling stuff if you ask me, but not in the sense meant by the article. I’m not in favor of MORE sexual education in primary schools - I’m in favor of less (actually: none is ideal). Especially when that “education” is provided by activist groups.

Investing in the Unknown and Unknowable

David Ricardo made a fortune buying bonds from the British government four days in advance of the Battle of Waterloo. He was not a military analyst, and even if he were, he had no basis to compute the odds of Napoleon’s defeat or victory, or hard-to-identify ambiguous outcomes. [...] Still, he knew that competition was thin, that the seller was eager, and that his windfall pounds should Napoleon lose would be worth much more than the pounds he’d lose should Napoleon win.

Mark Twain was right

The Tinybuild Fiasco

I wrote about that in my November update.

James and another shareholder did a sort of post-mortem video here.

The first interesting take-away is the importance of having the insider ownership be well distributed and not concentrated in the hands of the CEO. The CFO in particular is good to have on your side.

The second take-away for me was to be wary of the feeling of urgency when it comes to buying a stock. If you’re feeling rushed to buy, it’s most certainly better to walk away. You’ll have other opportunities. Take your time, keep following and studying the company. Only foold rush in.

The 3rd and last interesting bit was when James mentioned that he starting buying the stock around 50p, which is more than 5x higher than the current price - and that the P/E was a low-ish 10x back then, with revenues growing quickly. This goes to show how important the quality of revenue and income, and quality = predictability.

But what struck me is the absence of any remote form of guilt, responsibility or humility from James. After all, he did a ton of marketing for Tinybuild and he probably led a number of retail investors into this catastrophy.

Sure, we’re all responsible for our choices, but many would not even have heard about Tinybuild if it wasn’t for James. I’m not blaming him or anything, but he did contribute to the losses of many investors.

That doesn’t seem to bother him at all. Or he’s doing a really good job hiding it. He never mentions it anyway.

If it was me, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Imagine marketing and clamoring about a company that goes on to lose 80% of its value. Bad karma.

I don’t know, maybe it’s a white thing. No empathy, no fucks given. I wonder if this is an isolated example, but if not, could it explain why the Western world was so ripe for Marxism? Probably going too far here. Maybe.

Where are the stocks?!

No stock picks this month. Probably a mix of: laziness, distractions, busy with work, or sickness.