My must-listen today. As always insightful and personal by @BillBrewsterSCG. @NonGaap on anticipating big decisions, governance debt, board dynamics, patterns in newsflow, striking when "things don't make sense,"
bullish and bearish signals in compensation
[64] "The return on time of looking at proxy statements is remarkable. You can spend 30-60 minutes on this and develop thesis-changing insights. It's something you can add to your existing process that doesn't disrupt anything else."
[62] "Regardless of what you do, the highest conviction decision in your life should be your willingness to bet on yourself."
[98]
Peter Kaufman: “Most geniuses prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities.”
"Corp. governance, in context of investing, is exploiting unrecognized simplicity. Some very simple concepts that don't get priced into stocks."
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A good time to revisit that time when legendary trader Bob Wilson got caught in a short squeeze called Resorts International (which Forbes at the time called “the most catastrophic short play in modern times”)
Wilson was a child of the Great Depression and bought his first stocks at 29 after working some years at a bank's trust department. He put his money into two stocks: IBM and Houston Lightning & Power. On 75% margin, the maximum allowed then.
There was a small crash in 1956 and his portfolio was closed out by his broker. His money was gone and helplessly he watched the stocks recover quickly.
After that experience he decided to never be unhedged again.
The first community was Silicon Investor which got started in 1995, even before the launch of the Netscape browser. Eventually others came around like the yahoo message boards, ragingbull, motley fool.
Momo, pump'n'dump, bashers - new lingo was required for the internet age.
Short selling in the 80's sounds so much less exciting compared to today.
Go for terminal stocks (“frauds, bankruptcy candidates, accounting fiascos”) and complain they don't answer your calls, “it’s as if you were calling up the CEO to ask if someone in his family has AIDS”
Solid collection of trading quotes and wisdom by @gfc4
“Above all else...the stock market is people. People trying to read the future...The main obstacle lies in disentangling ourselves from our own emotions.” - Bernard Baruch
“Pride of opinion accounts for as many losses in the market as any other human factor. Traders, due to losses from previous trades in a stock, feel that the stock ‘owes them something’. They take gambling risks in order to ‘get even,’ in order to satisfy their pride or vanity.”
Druckenmiller: “around March 2000 I could feel it coming. I just- I had to play. I couldn’t help myself. I pick up the phone finally. I think I missed the top by an hour. I bought $6 billion worth of tech stocks, and in six weeks I had left Soros and I had lost $3 billion.”
Strauss Zelnick: “The only people in the media and entertainment space that don’t seem to have an expiration date are the owners. If I am successful at building my own thing, I can do it for as long as I want to“
“Any time you look at yourself or your business and think ‘I’ve got it all figured out, I’ve nailed this thing’… I really encourage you to retire”
Of course he once worked for Diller. Gotta do a piece on his talent track record.
"When Mr. Diller needed someone to manage the operations he hired Mr. Zelnick from an independent studio where one of his first movies greenlighted was “Dirty Dancing.”