$LVMH's Bernard Arnault is often known as "The Wolf in Cashmere", a nickname garnered for the predatory way he approaches acquisitions.

However, sometimes a company survives unscathed. Hermès $RMS.PA $HESAY is one of those instances. Here's how they did it 🧵 1/ This tale arguably starts with the Hermes’ desire to fund expansionary efforts. In 1993, Jean-Louis Dumas, the then-captain of this luxury behemoth’s ship, decided to float 4% of its shares in 1993, a figure that was later increased to 25% shortly thereafter.

Michael Burry needs no introduction.

His letters from his time at the helm of the Scion Value Fund are an absolute must-read.

Here are my 9 favourite excerpts 🧵👇 1/ What exactly was the fund's strategy? Here's how Michael Burry put it:

The founder of Copart, Willis Johnson, demonstrated a masterclass in entrepreneurship, work ethic, and ingenuity while at the helm of the $CPRT.

As a result of that foundation $CPRT has massively outpaced the market.

Here are of his insightful business lessons🧵 1/ First off - "earn a PhD in common sense". Johnson didn't tread the path of a typical MBA executive. instead, he learned lessons from a dairy farm, his businessman father who provided for his family despite being unable to read, and in the military in Vietnam.

Last year, I spent a few weeks diving deeply into $COST. One thing became clear - this company is one of the most exceptionally run businesses in history.

Here are some interesting tidbits from my research👇🧵 1/ $COST's origin stories can be traced back all the way to Sol Price, one of the first entrepreneurs that capitalized on the discount retail business model w/ Fed-Mart in 1954. After being ousted from Fed-Mart, Price then started Price-Club, which later merged with $COST in 1993

Every year I read as many books on finance, investing & business as possible.

As 2022 comes to a close, here is my updated top-10 list of must-reads 🧵👇 1/ Let's start with the works of my favourite author, Nassim Taleb. These key constituents of the Incerto series are an absolute must to develop your understanding of probabilistic thinking, randomness, and resiliency. They are as entertaining as they are informative

Nomad Investment Partnership returned 921% from 2001-2014, beating the MSCI World Index by 804% during that same time.

Their letters, written by Nick Sleep, are full of amazing pieces of wisdom.

I read 13 years of these masterpieces, here are my 13 favourite excerpts 🧵: 1/ Nomad was a global investment fund. Its investments, which Sleep and co researched in a manner akin to good "detective work", were evaluated using three core principles:

I spent weeks delving into one of the most important and unknown companies in the entire world - $ASML.

Here are the high-level takeaways from my research 👇🧵 1/ $ASML specializes in "lithography", a word derived from two Ancient Greek words "lithos", meaning stone, and "graphien", meaning to write. Put together this encapsulates the act of placing a design on a stone. In our case today, this refers to placing a design on silicon.

Giverny Capital has a stupendous track record - since July 1st, 1993 their Global Portfolio has beat the market by 4979.4%!

I read 20 years of their investor letters, here are my favourite excerpts👇🧵: 1/ From the 2001 letter, "The Art of Investing".

I try to read as many finance books as possible to continuously improve my knowledge.

Here are the 7 books I’ve read recently that I took a lot away from 👇 1/ The first is Richer, Wiser, Happier by @WilliamGreen72. The author delves deep into some of history’s greatest investors, outlining the lessons and takeaways he’s garnered from interviews and the study of investing’s greatest minds.

Bruce Flatt, CEO of $BAM, should be on the Mount Rushmore of investor letter authors.

I read 10 years of his $BAM quarterly letters, here are my 13 favourite excerpts👇🧵 1/ $BAM quarterly letters are all ended in a similar manner. Flatt outlines the primary goals of $BAM's operations:
- invest in high-quality, simple to understand assets that earn a high ROE
- continue to generate increasing amounts of CF & intrinsic value per share

Although prioritizing margins satisfies investors in the short-term, nearsightedness on financial optimization can lead to the erosion of competitive positioning.

Intel's history ( $INTC ) is a prime example of this. Here’s why 👇🧵 1/ Let’s start off with a bit about Intel’s origin stories. The company has had a plethora of CEOs, but the four men originally at the helm were Bob Noyce, Gordon Moore, Andy Grove, and Craig Barrett - each of whom had clear technical aptitude in either physics or engineering

1/ Tom Gayner, the now co-CEO of $MKL, has delivered astounding results for shareholders. Since the company’s 1986 IPO, the stock has appreciated 9600%+.

Here are his four main investment principles that have driven a large part of the company’s success: 2/ At the core of Gayner’s philosophy is the search for quality. Gayner focuses on locating above-average businesses that produce both good returns on total capital, and have a demonstrated record of profitability.

With no background in finance, I set out a year+ ago to learn as much as I could about the markets, investing, commodities etc. Here are the 10 books I found most useful 🧵(1/n) If I had to pick one author to act as my finance bible of sorts, it would be Taleb. Fooled by Randomness deals with the fallibility of human knowledge, the under-appreciation of randomness and risk and is a must read (2/n)

Seen lots of talk surrounding $PLTR's earnings over the last few days. Here is a thread of my thoughts on Q4'21 and FY'21 as a whole (1/n)🧵 Q4'21 Revenues came in at approximately $433M, a beat of 4% in comparison to Consensus Estimates. The Elephant in the Room here is Q4'21 EPS which came in at $0.02 in comparison to consensus of $0.04 (2/n)

Here are my high-level thoughts on $ABNB's most recent earnings. Not only did the company show strong YoY progress, they also beat most analyst estimates by a decent margin. Q1'22 revenues expected to come in the $1.410-$1.48B range (1/n): Not only was Top-Line growth strong, the company also saw stabilized and heightened efficiencies in expenses, achieving profitability on an Operating Level and the highest Adjusted EBITDA margins ever reported on an annual basis (2/n):

Earlier this week, $PLTR announced that they had entered into a multi-year strategic partnership with BlackSky following the completion of a successful pilot project. Let's take a look at some of the amazing use-cases that are possible 👇🧵(1/n) First things first, BlackSky is a leading provider of real-time geospatial intelligence, imagery and data analytic products. Their satellite constellation tech allows for the high-frequency observation of the Earth which has a host of commercial and government use-cases. (2/n)

Yesterday, $PLTR published an article regarding learnings obtained within the IoT Field. I decided to write a summary of the key points and sprinkle in a few of my own thoughts about the magnitude of this opportunity. Let's get started (1/n) 👇 Integrating sensors, edge AI, autonomous decisions and computing capabilities can unlock immense value for corporations. Per a Fortune Business Insights Study, the Global IoT market is expected to reach ~$1464B in size by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 24.9% from 2021-2027 (2/n)

Just finished listening to the Hedgeye TV Fireside w/ @AlderLaneeggs. They went DEEP on $OSTK and Medici Ventures (particularly @tZERO). In this thread you can see a summary of the things I felt were most important as well as my own notes mixed in (1/n): app.hedgeye.com/insights/10120… From the very beginning of $OSTK, analysts have been saying that the company will be destroyed by $AMZN. Ever under the questionable leadership of Byrne, $OSTK managed to avoid a retail obituary and THRIVE (2/n)

How $UPST is dealing with their inherent business risks, a short thread 👇(1/n): In my $UPST deep-dive I noted that 98% of their revenue comes from Cross River Bank
Customers Bank, FinWise Bank, First Federal Bank of Kansas City, First National Bank of Omaha, KEMBA Financial Credit Union, TCF Bank and Ridgewood Savings Bank (2/n) mtcapital.substack.com/p/upstart-hold…

If you could go back in time to when you first started investing and give yourself advice what would it be? I asked some of favourite fintwit accounts what they thought, a thread👇(1/n) Starting with myself (2/n)

$ABNB The lockup period for Airbnb ends today. In this thread I explain what a lockup period is and how it could effect the short-term price action of the stock: A lock-up period is a pre-determined amount of time following an IPO (initial public offering) where large shareholders (executives etc.) are restricted from selling their shares: