My greatest failings as an investor have all been overstaying my welcome. I've done ~3x as many times as selling too soon. Putting this out there so 1) I hold myself accountable to it; and, 2) others can learn from my tuition. More to come on this topic. Good luck to all. & I say this as 2 of my 3 longest tenured, largest positions are moving in the exact opposite direction this morning.

I know this market wants to throw every COVID winner out the door, but Naked Wines reaction is truly mystefying. $WINE Retention of the COVID cohort was exceptionally strong and despite normalization in order rates, results from existing customers were better than expected.

The flip side is that new customer acquisition was worse.

Long-term these two balance each other out.

A few thoughts as I soak in these $TWTR results.

1) Before the analyst day, I had been working w/ 6m net new users per quarter as the "steady state" of the business. I wonder if @nedsegal & team have some regrets dishout out the 315m by 2023, b/c 6m looks right It's a good sign that net new users has stabilized at a higher plateau. The breakout heading into COVID looks especially clear now. Getting up to a 12m/Q pace looks challenging.

Naked Wines (in the US in particular) is perhaps the best example of "counterpositioning" as introduced in Hamilton Helmer's 7 Powers that I have seen. amazon.com/7-Powers-Found… DTC & online are especially important channels today. Over 1 in 5 bottles shipped to a house in the US is produced and shipped by Naked Wines. ~80% of bottles sub-$20 are shipped by Naked.

Oh no the Space jsut crashed during a great question from @BillBrewsterSCG to @nedsegal and one I wanted to chime in on too! Major appreciation to @nedsegal for joining the Space and facing and answering one question after another for over an hour with us $TWTR investors. There were hard, granular questions & high level strategy/product ones. Ned hit them all. Thank you!

"Charlie and I would much rather earn a lumpy 15% over time than a smooth 12%." <--speaking annually.

But the avg TWTR investor (both on Twitter & in TWTR) wants a smooth 15% compounded monthly.

🤷‍♂️ Amazing to indict an analyst day that's supposed to guide the next 3 years over the course of 2 months.

Thanks to @wup242 for the suggestion to discuss emerging quality. It's a really important one for me.

I was really surprised at some of the top performers over the last decade+.

Truly enjoyed this whole conversation, give a listen:

https://twitter.com/twiii_podcast/status/1386049234244456450

Traits of quality:
-Persistently high ROICs that are consistent from 1 year to the next
-Either very high margins or very high capital turnover-slight digression, far too many people focus on margins alone.

I don't think enough people are talking about how the moves in lumber & copper and the tightness in supplies of semiconductors are all related to COVID lockdowns+restrictions alongside a demand collapse, remaining in bottleneck while demand recaptures prior trends. These bottlenecks are temporary. The price signals are being conflated with inflation or demand remaining at present levels, but all these problems will solve themselves in time w/ modest supply side investment and the catchup demand waning off to steady state.

I just want to share something: when I started on my path in finance, I had hardly used Excel in my life (a 2x liberal arts major who went to law school). I started @briand_mi's Breaking Into Wall Street as my "New Year's Resolution" in 2011 and it changed EVERYTHING for me. If you're new to this or just trying to get better, I couldn't more strongly recommend Breaking into Wall Street. The courses are fantastic. You will go from Excel short-cuts, to basic models, to complex mergers and special sector focuses.

We're in the part of the cycle where the avg analyst is using relative multiples to ignore the low prices on their DCFs and say "this has infinity upside" but when it comes to TWTR, rule #1 in the analyst community is "thou must hate the DCF, b/c thou cannot possibly be bullish." The amount of stocks I've seen where it's like "DCF is a $30 / share price but the peer group is trading at 20x sales, so my PT is $72" is a dime a dozen.

Instacart is a great example of a company that as it exists today is a interim, not end state business. There will be opportunities to change that positioning, but they will face some critical choices ahead. Supermarkets are built purposely in prominent locations to catch retail eye & the layout is designed to offer a wide range of SKUs while drawing attention to the highest margin and/or velocity ones.

So yesterday I promised some more thoughts on $TWTR, here goes. The stock's move was really frustrating, but the results were more bittersweet than meets the eye.

cc @jack @nedsegal This Q should've been a victory lap for the Twitter team on a major accomplishment. mDAU growth had stalled in the HSD/LDD range for 5 years. 17% is a major change. w/ very little inertia on sequential growth, the FY number will be even better

https://twitter.com/kayvz/status/1187350677581946882