Buffett's letters since his partnership years are jammed with insights.
And he taught me more than any business school ever could.
This year is no different.
Here are my key insights:
1. Buffett and Munger's investing philosophy
Their goal is to look for businesses with both durable economic advantages and a first-class CEO.
2. Pick the right businesses and the stock price will take care of itself.
"...we own stocks based upon our expectations about their long-term business performance and not because we view them as vehicles for timely market moves."
3. Warren uses leverage...
With his insurance businesses!
So far this leverage (aka float) has:
•Cost him nothing
•Gave him a sticky source of capital
The latter is important.
A sticky source of capital allows Buffett to make long-term investments.
4. Look-through earnings
$BRK owns 5.39% of $APPL
But its share of earnings isn't fully captured on its income statement.
Only the dividends is received.
But don't forget...
There's the retained earnings which is ploughed into share buybacks & reinvestment.
5. Why Buffett loves the insurance business
Because it fits Buffett's rule for investing...
A company that can generate durable growth and it's tough for competitors to catch up with them!
6. How Buffett likes his earnings
TLDR; After ALL expenses have been accounted for.
7. THREE ways to increase $BRK value
1) Increase earnings power of wholly owned businesses or make more acquisitions 2) Buy shares of publicly listed businesses 3) Repurchase $BRK shares
More on repurchasing $BRK shares...
In Buffett's 1999 letter, he outlines the conditions required for share repurchases to be value accretive:
1) The company has available funds—cash plus sensible borrowing capacity, AND 2) Its stock is selling in the market below its intrinsic value, conservatively-calculated.
8. Why Buffett loves teaching
Buffett started teaching investing 70 years ago.
"Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts."
@heymaxkoh and I will be teaming up to teach investing.
If you are interested, let us know by dropping a 🚀 below!
@heymaxkoh 9. Career advice for university students
Seek employment in:
1) the field and 2) with the kind of people they would select....
If they had no need for money.
It's not easy. But don't give up on the quest to hunt for a job where they will no longer be "working".
Fundsmith is on track for its 5th year of underperformance.
In a recent interview, Terry Smith explains the reasons why—and what he thinks is wrong with the market today.
Key insights: 🧵
Smith breaks down the underperformance into distinct phases:
2022-23: Interest rates rose from 0% to 5%
2023: Magnificent Seven concentration
2024: AI boom/hype
Throughout: Passive fund flows
He claims each one is a headwind for quality investors.
On interest rates:
Quality companies trade at higher valuations because more cash flows are in the future. When rates rise, they behave like long-dated bonds—they get hit harder.
"When rates go up, our type of companies suffer in share price terms and companies which we wouldn't own which are very cyclical or not very good actually relatively benefit."
Eric Seufert and Ben Thompson just released an interview that reframes AI monetization strategy.
Why affiliate links fail, why "agentic commerce" won't happen, the Netflix lesson OpenAI is ignoring, and Meta's first real bear case in years.
What stood out: 🧵
Context: Everyone assumes ChatGPT will monetize through affiliate links (Walmart, Etsy partnerships).
Seufert's argument: this is the wrong model. And the urgency is real—"OpenAI needs to launch its ads product today, they cannot wait."
Why affiliate advertising is wrong for ChatGPT:
1. It only monetizes queries with commercial intent
Seufert: "If you're using ads, you get to monetize everything because it's every single engagement. If you're just using affiliate links, you can only monetize the ones that are like, 'What's the DSLR camera?'."
This is what happens when you answer the "tell me about your weakness" question too honestly.
PayPal CEO Alex Chriss at Citi's FinTech Conference laid out the challenges so clearly it spooked the market.
Here's what he said: 🧵
1/ Consumer spending deteriorated suddenly mid-September and it's persisting into Q4.
Chriss: "We started to see a slowdown on consumers, particularly around discretionary spending, retail and really in middle to low income brackets, which play a significant role in PayPal."
The weakness is concentrated: "If we look at some of our cohorts of higher income spenders, they're still spending. But we are seeing pressure for middle to lower income."
Q4 branded checkout expected to grow slower than Q3 as a result.
2/ The branded checkout rollout is taking much longer than expected.
Only 20% complete after significant time. Chriss admitted: "That's probably the piece I underestimated the most in terms of just how long it would take to get that experience out to customers."
The timeline? "We're just going to have to go through the hard work over the next few quarters and maybe even a couple of years to get through our backlog of merchants."
Years, not quarters. That's a meaningful delay.
Why so slow? Technical debt worse than realized.
Chriss: "We have 15-plus years of really bespoke integrations across our merchant base. This was something I personally didn't appreciate when I got here of just how many different integration patterns there have been."