Blog

NOTE: this was a past issue of my weekly newsletter, Timeless Gems. Join my free mailing list so you don’t miss out on future issues. Today’s gem is a book excerpt from George Soros’ Alchemy of Finance, written in the late 1980s discussing venture capital’s boom and bust. This could’ve been written […]

NOTE: this was a past issue of my weekly newsletter, Timeless Gems. Join my free mailing list so you don’t miss out on future issues. Today’s gem is a table that compares the commonalities among the 8 “Outsider” CEOs, and some discussion around one of the commonalities that stood out to me. […]

NOTE: this was a past issue of my weekly newsletter, Timeless Gems. Join my free mailing list so you don’t miss out on future issues. I recently read the book, Capital Returns. It’s a collection of letters from Marathon Asset Management from 2002 to 2015. I thought it was a fantastic read and […]

NOTE: this was a past issue of my weekly newsletter, Timeless Gems. Join my free mailing list so you don’t miss out on future issues. A hill I am willing to die on: distribution is far more important than product. A business that has better access to customers will beat out the business […]

This week’s gem is a tweet that summarizes two types of investors, bettors vs builders. I generally agree with this framework. Both types can make money. Both types also have their limitations: For bettors – markets are generally quite efficient, so finding mispriced assets is a rare feat. Not to mention, […]

Today’s gem is this interview exerpt from Magnus Söderlind, CEO of Bergman & Beving (a Swedish serial acquirer): Customer (and or supplier) concentration is a common deal killer for us. I’ve talked about this many times, but most recently in my Porters 5 Forces issue (see bargaining power of customers & suppliers). […]

First, I want to thank all of you who came to SMB Social in Toronto last night. I’m blown away by the attendance (~120 people showed up). Big shoutout to Nunzio for putting this together! I’m grateful to have had a chance to connect with many of you, and for the folks that I […]

Today’s gem is this anecdote from Sam Zell (rest in peace) on assessing an opportunity: More research & analysis doesn’t result in better investment performance. But oftentimes (and dangerously so), it results in more confidence, and at the very least, wasted time. Talented investors can quickly determine what are the […]

Today’s gem is this excerpt taken from Berkshire Hathaway’s last shareholder letter: After 58 years, Warren Buffett concludes that it was really only 12 good decisions that led to $BRK becoming the $700bn+ behemoth it is today. That’s roughly 1 good decision every 5 years. It’s both daunting and liberating […]

Today’s gem is a framework to assess a business’s competitiveness called the Porter’s Five Forces Analysis. If you went to business school, you’ve seen this before and it might seem cliche…but I honestly believe it’s an effective way to quickly (and objectively) assess a business. In fact, at Atlasview, we incorporate […]

Today’s gem is an anecdote from Joel Greenblatt on how Warren Buffett approaches portfolio concentration: What I find interesting is the wide-ranging definitions of “concentrated portfolio”. Some investors might consider 25 stocks to be concentrated. Others would say only 5 stocks or less should be considered concentrated. It’s really arbitrary, […]

Today’s gem is a snippet from James Clear’s newsletter on lucky opportunities: I have a saying that’s relevant to this: in order to be at the right place at the right time, you need to be in a lot of places all the time. I’ve had many lucky opportunities throughout […]

This week’s gem is an article about Thomson Newspapers. It’s a fascinating read, and a mandatory one for anyone invested in a compounder company, such as Constellation Software. Thomson Newspapers is what the end state looks like. You can read the Thomson Newspapers article here (there’s also a link to Part 1 […]

This week I was at the Enduring Ventures shareholder summit in Miami. I want to thank both Sieva and Xavier (give them both a follow!) for putting on a great event. And also for inviting me to do a fireside chat on my favourite compounders and lessons we can learn from them. I figured […]

NOTE: this was a past issue of my weekly newsletter, Timeless Gems. Join my free mailing list so you don’t miss out on future issues. Though heavily linked and correlated, business returns (or quality of the business) and investment returns (or quality of the investment) are two separate concepts. Some investors analyze […]

I’ve been writing for 10+ years now. I started with long-form writing on my blog. I’d write whenever I felt like it, on topics related to business, entrepreneurship and investing. I’d probably only post something 3-4 times a year, and had virtually zero audience. But around 3 years ago, I […]

NOTE: this was a past issue of my weekly newsletter, Timeless Gems. Join my free mailing list so you don’t miss out on future issues. Today’s gem is this chart which shows how rare sustained revenue growth is: Growth is hard. There are several reasons why it’s rare for a company to […]

NOTE: this was a past issue of my weekly newsletter, Timeless Gems. Join my free mailing list so you don’t miss out on future issues. Today’s gem is this anecdote from Howard Marks on long run vs short run investment performance: Incredible (and accurate) framework. The key to extraordinary returns over the […]

NOTE: this was a past issue of my weekly newsletter, Timeless Gems. Join my free mailing list so you don’t miss out on future issues. Today’s gem is this calculation of maintainable free cash flow, and this thread by SecretCFO where he breaks it down: This is a great visualization of the distinction between: […]

NOTE: this was a past issue of my weekly newsletter, Timeless Gems. Join my free mailing list so you don’t miss out on future issues. Today’s gem is this excerpt from Nassim Taleb on banks & negative optionality: Given the recent events, the sentence “banks lose periodically every penny made in their […]