$ASML is a US$260 billion company today.

But it is far from an overnight success.

The company's key product, the EUV system, took almost 20 years to develop; it took a village to get it done, every step of the way. 🧵 1/23

1997 to 2010: from concept to prototype

The idea behind EUV was conceptualised in the mid-1980s.

But it wasn’t until 1997 when ASML launched its EUV program by hiring Jos Benschop (Senior VP of Technology) to lead the charge.

$MELI CEO Marcos Galperin (8 Dec'07)

"One of the things I think we did right relative to the rest – there were 40 companies doing exactly what we were doing – some of them raised more funds than we did.

Only a handful were able to do a couple of rounds of financing." $MELI [cont'd]

"That was a key to differentiation from other companies.

All of them [competitors] spent all of their money doing mass marketing, doing the Pets.com strategy.

We saved our cash and developed our products."

How fear swindles investors today

Peter Lynch said you can be the world’s greatest expert in financial statements but without a strong stomach, you will sell in panic.

It's not the lack of know-how that is stopping investors, it's FEAR.

Time for a 🧵

h/t Beating the Street

1/ Part of the reason is our ability to pattern match.

Daniel Kahneman describes two general modes of thinking:
1. System 1 (reflexive) for intuitive, snap decisions
2. System 2 (reflective) for untangling time-consuming, complex problems

Drawing inspiration from @TessAngWrites

My favourite Peter Lynch quotes involve rocks, pants, kisses, and faith:

1/5

"The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game."

2/5

"I'm always fully invested. It's a great feeling to be caught with your pants up."

https://twitter.com/TessAngWrites/status/1583791825206157312

3/5

"You don't have to "kiss all the girls." I've missed my share of tenbaggers and it hasn't kept me from beating the market."

4/5

"Keeping the faith and stockpicking are normally not discussed in the same paragraph, but success in the latter depends on the former."

Me in 2005-ish: this "investing" thing is easy.

I read a book about Warren Buffett, there were step-by-step instructions on what companies to buy and how to value them.

I can do the math. Easy peasy ... right? I decided to wade into the stock market to test my newfound investing knowledge.

Unfortunately, what I found was a mess of companies which did not fit nicely into the steps which I had learnt in the book.

In short, I quickly got confused.

In less than 2 weeks, I will be celebrating my 15th anniversary of holding shares of $NFLX.

The experience has been both educational and financially rewarding as an investor.

Here are 15 highlights and lessons from my 15-year journey.

#asseeninbt #nflx #netflix 1/15 Start small, dream big

$NFLX started with DVD by mail in 1997.

But Hastings had his eye on the bigger prize: delivering video over the Internet. He stressed that the company was named Netflix from the start and not DVD-by-mail.