Classical value investors were my first investing subculture, back in the early 2000s. Like all subcultures, they have their sacred texts (The Intelligent Investor, Warren Buffett’s various epistles), their status games (Usually value investors are really impressed by obscure stocks — “My biggest position is a Hungarian haberdashery company trading
The idealized model of the way the media operate is this: a reporter makes a bunch of observations, slowly comes to a conclusion, and then writes up what they learned in order to let the reader draw their own conclusion. The cynic says this is 100% backwards: a reporter starts
There are really only two things that get the financial sector in trouble: excess leverage, and maturity transformation. Excess leverage is easy to understand. If you have $100 of assets, and you borrow $50 against it, you’re safe as long as the value of your assets never declines by
When people talk about the financial services industry and subsidies, they’re usually thinking of implicit subsidies the industry receives — you can cast the bankruptcy code, the tax treatment of interest, and even the existence of central banks as an implicit finance industry subsidy. But it’s a tricky topic:
American liberals and conservatives don’t differ in explicit beliefs all that much. In a non-parliamentary system, the two parties coalesce at just-visibly-left- and just-visibly-right-of center. There’s no need to go any further, and per Hotelling’s Law it’s a bad idea anyway. And yet on countless individual
The copywriter Eugene Schwartz was a master growth hacker. Sometimes, he wasn’t sure if a product was worth manufacturing — so he’d run ads for it and sell it anyway, and just cancel the orders if demand wasn’t there. Sometimes, it’s the marketing campaign that creates the
Campaign finance laws exist to provide transparency and prevent undue influence. It would be bad for a very rich person to write a giant check to a politician who, in return, passed laws that made that rich person richer. That’s especially risky because it’s a self-perpetuating cycle. If
Is there a speed limit for wealth creation? Two recent Twitter threads asked this question in two different ways, which is the sign of an interesting problem. In both cases, the question is: subject to an extreme constraint — time or headcount— how rich can you get? This is a salient
A few months ago, a friend of mine got tired of his job and decided to learn to code. Suddenly, he’s a professional programmer. There are several reasons this happened — he’s a smart and curious guy, and he really wanted a better career. And there’s one specific
Twice in the last two years, I’ve read headlines and thought “Hm. It sure sounds like a nuclear war is more likely than it used to be.” Like you, I wondered: how will this affect my portfolio? Is this bullish? Perhaps you’re wondering other things, but you should
Welcome to The Diff by me, Byrne Hobart. Equity research, Schelling Points, lost causes, reading more than the abstract, urbanization. Married to the Foursquare Mayor of the Union Square Babies-R-Us Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue. Subscribe now In the meantime, tell your friends!