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NeckarCap

@NeckarValue

5 Jan

A few notes on professional poker players and parallels I see with investors from the book The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King (about a series of high stakes poker games between Vegas pros and renegade real estate investor/banker Andy Beal)

"The best players walk a tightrope between their business sense and their passion. As professionals, they seek out the most profitable opportunities. As gamblers, they want the risk and excitement of having something important on the line."

"Elite players are drawn from a pool of gamblers, not problem solvers or people readers. They start off losing like everybody else."
Ingredients: competitive drive, risk tolerance - and "a lot of losing." It's ok to pay your dues, that's how you learn.

Read 10 tweets

NeckarCap

@NeckarValue

4 Jan

1999 article on Yahoo for a glance at the dotcom bubble mindset.
It's not that investors didn't understand valuation. They accepted it reluctantly because internet stocks were ripping and they had to show relative performance.

archive.fortune.com/magazines/fort…

"Yahoo has taken the final step on its journey to blue-chip status: It has become a "must" for mutual funds and other big institutional buyers of stock"
"If you don't own some of these stocks, you're being fiduciarily irresponsible."

"Watching short-sellers being kicked in the stomach by...Yahoo, it's difficult for us to say one should have any regard for valuations when it comes to high-profile stocks"

"As everyone that has tried to short the stock will tell you, it is very difficult to fight the momentum."

Read 13 tweets

NeckarCap

@NeckarValue

3 Jan

There is a perception that Buffett spends his days at the desk, eating candy, reading annual reports at a pace of 500 pages per minute. Sometimes he gets a call for a great deal. Maybe that's the case today. But to get here, Buffett was proactive, networked, traveled a ton.

For example, the biennial meeting that started as the Graham Group and became the Buffett Group. They met all over the country, sometimes in Europe. Today he might be at events like Sun Valley. But early on he cultivated and maintained his tribe.

He found ways that work for him: small group setting vs. formal dinners. Playing bridge. Intellectually stimulating talks. But he traveled.

Read 7 tweets

NeckarCap

@NeckarValue

2 Jan

That time everyone in Omaha forgot about Berkshire and went crazy for a bubble stock: Level 3 Communications.

Enter Walter Scott, CEO of Kiewit, Omaha's biggest construction company (BRK's offices are at Kiewit Plaza). He and Buffett go way back: "I first got to know Walter when we were teenagers. We both had a crush on the same girl. Walter won her and they ended up getting married."

But seriously, Buffett: "A lot of people like to make simple things complex. Walter does the opposite. He has an ability to cut through what's complicated. He is a man who gives you his word. He is a person of great integrity. People here have tremendous respect for him."

Read 22 tweets

NeckarCap

@NeckarValue

6 Dec 20

@SeanDeLaney23

No matter where you stand on $SNOW stock, this conversation by @SeanDeLaney23 with Frank Slootman is very compelling. Focused on his leadership style, creating a performance culture, time at Data Domain
A few notes:

whatgotyouthere.com/portfolio/223-…

[Min.5] As an immigrant "my credentials were hard to pronounce."
"My initial strategy was to take on challenges that nobody would touch with a ten foot pole."
“While I didn’t enjoy working on these crummy businesses it was incredibly informative.”

[6.40] Business and career as card games:
“It’s a combination of the cards you’re dealt, which is a function of luck, and how well you play those cards which is a function of skill. And it’s the same with companies”
Once you have options: "Be careful what elevator you step into."

Read 7 tweets

NeckarCap

@NeckarValue

30 Nov 20

Irwin Simon was a kid from a small town in Nova Scotia, stocking the shelves at his father's grocery store.

Starting with $500k from a second mortgage he pulled off a string of high-wire deals and forged natural food giant Hain Celestial.

“My father wasn't a risk taker and that held him back. Today, taking a risk is something I'm willing to do, and that's probably from seeing what my father didn't do in life.”

After college he worked for Häagen-Dazs and moved to NYC.
“It was one of the greatest jobs I ever had. I learned the value of brand equity and selling quality products. It was started in Bronx, but the perception was that Häagen-Dazs was a brand created in Sweden.”

Read 17 tweets

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