1/ @LibertyRPF is one of those people who makes fintwit such a worthwhile experience. I've learnt invaluable life lessons from him which I frankly doubt I could get elsewhere.
I’m glad through @InfiniteL88ps podcast others could have a glimpse of his wisdom. My notes.
2/ “people work and they trade their time for money, but it works both ways, so if you have enough money, you can buy back your own time.”
3/ "humans are very bad at predicting what's going to make them happy. As you often talk about, we're super nomadic, so we just look around, look at what everybody else is doing and go, Well, that must be the way," so we copy each other and we chase what everybody else is chasing
4/ “..instead of looking at what people are chasing, look at what people who are happy, what have they got? How did they get there? That's a much better way, like kind of the base rate way to do it.”
5/ In an age dominated by deluge of information, curation is going to be incredibly valuable. Your "taste" on your sources can and will make a difference since you cannot possibly follow everything by yourself.
6/ "I'm not trying to optimize for the best returns...I am trying to optimize for happiness"
7/ How many stocks do you own?
"There's the correct answer and then there's the answer behind the answer."
8/ "I would rather be emotional in the way that I like a business too much and I hold it for too long, than emotional in the direction where I sell too quickly and too easily as soon as there's some volatility."
9/ "Base rates are amazing. Base rates are one of the best tools that we have to think more clearly, make fewer mistakes."
But...there's a but.
10/ Before meeting him, I always imagined Liberty as “a former engineer who made so much money that he decided to retire early to just focus on investing”. Nope.
He is just a self-taught random Canadian guy.
11/ "You need moderators that are just active enough to keep the trolls away so that the community can flourish. On Twitter, it's self-organizing. There's no mods, so it would seem harder" but it's not.
12/ One of the strangest things is the "Liberty" identity is so ingrained in my head that I keep calling him that even though he did mention his actual full name to me. I don't even remember his last name now 😂
Our digital identity has already started taking over. Metaverse?
13/ Unless you are managing money professionally, I think individual investors need not beat them too much if they don't beat the market. If your savings rate is good even with the avg income in your country, your CAGR return is almost immaterial to your long-term happiness.
14/ "if the arguments are stronger, you should want to change your mind. If you don't change your mind, that's the defeat."
Also, great bit about how specialists cannot look where generalists can at times.
15/ "it's a lot easier to remove things that make you unhappy than to add things that make you happy. I feel like our society, for all its faults and its flaws, has been pretty good at removing a bunch of stuff that makes us suffer"
16/ "Cal Newport is a writer I quite like. He talks about how the jobs that everybody wants have certain shared characteristics, and so they're autonomy, creativity, and impact."
17/ I earnestly believe if we do a "real" II ranking 10-15 years from now, there will be at least 3 analysts who are just writing their own newsletters. One of them is going to be @scuttleblurb. He's basically already there, but we don't have "real" II ranking.
"Market environment remains weak, with shipments below 2019 levels."
growth opportunities in industrial and automotive
Four revenue scenarios for 2026, with floor being $20 Bn. FYI, $TXN consensus estimates for '26 revenue is $20 Bn.
"I would be extremely disappointed if it ends up at $20 billion. That's not my expectation. That's not the signature I see as we compete for market share today."
I received a couple of DMs asking about "hey, what's going on in Bangladesh"
While I left Bangladesh in 2017, my almost entire family still lives there. So I'm keenly aware of what's going on. I'll briefly cover what happened and the implications.
let's start with the end result. The Prime Minister (PM) Sheikh Hasina or SH (who's the Head of State in Bangladesh) fled the country after facing intense protest from Bangladeshi students. Her exact location doesn't seem to be confirmed yet (rumored to be India or EU).
Let's back up a little and give some brief historical context.
SH came to power in 2008. Her father- Mujib was the architect in mobilizing people in Bangladesh to gain independence from Pakistan in 1971. Following independence, Mujib became the first PM of Bangladesh.
closed my $AMZN Jan 2025 $160 calls that I wrote. 43% gain in this trade, but feels like just another lucky trade as I now think AMZN is undervalued (and I was likely too cautious to hedge it at $160 back then). Kept the $55 calls unhedged now.
CSU's organic growth for recurring revenue will probably more or less mimic $BRO's organic growth. But CSU has ~20% ROIC vs BRO's ~10% but they trade at *almost* similar multiple. So I decided to buyback what I trimmed.
Going through insurance brokers earnings now. $AON and $MMC finally growing in tandem after AON lagged MMC consistently since 2Q'21.
$BRO is the clear winner in organic growth for this quarter. (disc: long $BRO and $AON)
Looking closer between MMC and AON.
will add to this thread later as I go through the transcript.
In the meantime, here's my Deep Dive on $BRO (also explains why I love this industry and would like to own probably most of these companies over time at "right" valuation):
After sequential revenue decline in China for 7 consecutive quarters, this quarter experienced ~15-20% growth across all segments in China. Europe and Japan are also in early phase of the upcycle.
More commentary on China:
"the market is more competitive in China, but we can compete and we can win business in very attractive margins"
expect incremental margin to be ~75-85% (ex depreciation)
"Inventory is being built at the right part, where we have this diversity and longevity positions such that we don't risk the scrap of the inventory."