Articles to start off a rainy October

I was just looking at the list of top brands I posted on Sunday and I notice a lot of technology companies on that list. I wonder if technology companies were as prominent one or two decades ago, and whether the brands have staying power. Thirty or fourty years ago, I would imagine that these lists would have been mostly dominated by branded consumer goods companies. Will companies like Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Google, Amazon, and so forth, stay near the top? It'll be an interesting situation to watch.

Anyway, here are some articles I encountered in the last few months that you may find worth reading...
  • Current state of Live Nation (Fortune): One of the companies on my watchlist is Live Nation (LYV), a ticketing and events promoter created out a merger with Ticketmaster. Fortune has a story updating the current scenario.
  • Sal Khan's free online teaching modules (Fortune): Apparently a favourite of Bill Gates, Salman Khan's webiste, khanacademy.org, offers free online video tutorials on subjects ranging from history, to science to mathematics. These are good tutorials for students and others who want to learn on their own. There are even some good investment tutorials, such as this excellent tutorial on P/E ratios for newbies.
  • Canadian Coffeeshop Tim Hortons to take over the world? (Report on Business magazine): I have no interest in the cofeeshop business but I always find it worthwhile to read long articles on various businesses. Although it doesn't help your immediate investing, it can provide insights that may be useful in the long run.
  • (Recommended) "Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds" by Michael Lewis (Vanity Fair; h/t http://www.gurufocus.com/forum/read.php?1,106875,106915): As usual, an entertaining, no-holds-barred article from the great business writer, Michael Lewis. There were some funny moments in the story and it's worth reading just for that.
  • Does a poor 10-year return lead to strong future return? (Hussman Funds; h/t GuruFocus): Bill Hester evaluates the thinking used by many to justify an expectation of strong stock market returns over the next 10 years. Historically, poor 10-year rolling returns has almost always resulted in very strong, above-average, returns for the following 10 years. Hester argues this may not be the case right now given how valuations aren't low and the forward-looking economic picture looks poor (compared to the historical cases where the returns off a poor decade were strong).
  • (Recommended if macro-oriented) Hugh Hendry audio interview with King World News (King World News; h/t Vlado): A pretty good interview, although I didn't learn much from this. Hugh Hendry reiterates his super-bearish view of Japan—so much so that he appears to have taken a $2 billion bearish bet on Japanese corporate bonds. Some of what Hugh Hendry does seems very speculative to me but macro investors always do this. Betting a small amount with a potentially large upside sounds good on paper but a 100% loss is still a total wipeout, whether you invest a small amount or not.
  • (Recommended if you are into entrepreneurship) Slideshow - America's most promising start-ups (Bloomberg Businessweek): Interesting ideas being worked on... who knows which ones will be successful...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Thoughts on the stock market - March 2020

Image
Right now, DJIA has a P/E of 16.8 and forwand P/E of 15.1, whereas S&P 500 is at 20.1 with forward P/E of 15.8. Source: WSJ market Data If you ignore interest rates and inflation expectations--both of these influence valuations but depends on your macro call-- the market is not cheap. Long-term P/E is around 15. Trailing P/E is around 20% (Dow) to 40% (S&P500) higher than average. Forward P/E is in line with long term average but that assumes a strong V recovery. Consensus forecast is for profits to drop 1.2% in 2020. In 2008, it dropped 25.4% so current forecast is a very mild recession. Covid-19 coronavirus is not going to last more than a few months but these forecasts are still too rosy in my opinion. So I wouldn't rely on forward P/E. The richly valued (mostly tech or high quality) have not fallen much but the distressed ones have. So if you want to outperform in the long run, I think one’s choice right now is to: • Wait for market to fall another, say
✖ READ MORE >>>

Warren Buffett's Evolution and his Three Investment Styles

Image
A Young Warren Buffett In a comment to one of my posts , Mark Carter, who incidentally appears to have a  good blog worth checking out , asked: "Buffett Prime is 1970's to early 1990's" Could you elaborate? I have vaguely indicated how I view Warren Buffett in the past, but I thought I would detail my view of his investing behaviour. This is more of an opinion piece and many others would disagree with me (if you do, I'm curious to hear your thoughts). I don't follow Warren Buffett as closely as many value investors so I may get some facts wrong. My view is that Warren Buffett went through three different phases, with each consisting of different investment techniques. The overall investment theory remained the same—what people call value investing—but his execution, tactics, and strategy differs across the three phases. Some people may break up his career into additional periods but my feeling is that the three I will describe essentially capt
✖ READ MORE >>>

Charlie Munger: Stock market as a pari-mutuel betting system

The model I like to sort of simplify the notion of what goes o­n in a market for common stocks is the pari-mutuel system at the racetrack. If you stop to think about it, a pari-mutuel system is a market . Everybody goes there and bets and the odds change based o­n what's bet. That's what happens in the stock market. —Charlie Munger, "Art of Stock Picking" Although I don't share the same views on politics, I am probably closer to Charlie Munger than Warren Buffett when it comes to how we view the world. Warren Buffett is almost singly focused on business and investing, and is not very opinionated, indeed possibly not knowledgeable, in other areas. In contrast, I am closer to Charlie Munger in the sense that I have diverse interests—you can probably tell by the articles I link to or write about—and have an opinion on almost anything. There is one big difference though: I am not into the field of psychology quite like Munger. So it may be surprising to see me rarely
✖ READ MORE >>>