What I Learned About Investing from Darwin
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Read between August 21 - August 26, 2023
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But for some reason, the deep desire to look far in the future to arrive at an exact number overwhelms the rational voice admonishing the person to stop pretending they are doing anything useful.
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We have never done a DCF analysis and never will. However, I know many—if not most—investors and analysts do. Maybe
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When evaluating a business, risk comes first, quality second, and valuation last.
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Giving weight to a track record is a necessary condition for investment success, but it is in no way sufficient.
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We find this to be especially true in fast-changing industries that may or may not be technology related.
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The anoles are a textbook example of evolutionary “convergence” wherein unrelated organisms in similar environments develop the same body form and adaptations independently.
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(Now is not the time or place for me to comment on India’s medal tally.)
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“Animals, belonging to two most distinct lines of descent, may readily become adapted to similar conditions, and thus assume a close external resemblance.”
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Convergence in nature symbolizes a profound fact: There is a pattern to success and failure.
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I want to emphasize that this was neither the bank’s nor the management’s fault. They were doing their job. But, unfortunately, I forgot to do mine.
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It is emblematic of the classic network effect: Naukri is number one because it is number one.
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While Naukri operates in a different era in a different medium, our view was that it converged with many of the virtuous traits of a leading Yellow Pages business.
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I am in awe of successful venture capital firms, but my admiration for them will never translate into a desire to emulate them.
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Daniel Kahneman is one such individual. His masterpiece Thinking, Fast and Slow should be compulsory reading for all investing 101 classes.
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In the competition with the inside view, the outside view does not stand a chance.”
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Many males typically descend on a female and start copulating in a frenzy. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Okay, agreed, a bit disconcerting, but you know what I mean.
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aposematic
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Lend credence only to those signals from companies that are costly to produce.
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“The business ‘grapevine’ is a remarkable thing. It is amazing what an accurate picture of the relative points of strength and weakness of each company in an industry can be obtained from a representative cross-section of the opinions of those who in one way or another are concerned with any particular company.”
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Ignore the green frog and heed the guppy.
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So it would be highly unusual not to find CNBC playing on mute in their offices or a shiny Bloomberg terminal with scrolling news stories on their desks.
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“In Darwin’s treatment of the subject, no proof is adduced
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Owing to its remote location, it is home to several endemic species
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Contrary to the expectations of Darwinism, evolution can be faster when measured over shorter periods and slower over longer periods. Björn Kurtén demonstrated this phenomenon in the evolution of the teeth of European brown bears.
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It doesn’t matter if an airline has declared spectacular results recently or if every analyst recommends buying airline shares. We are indifferent to a public sector bank that has hired a new CEO from the private sector and has pushed its stock price to an all-time high. We ignore an infrastructure business that has been awarded a new multibillion-dollar contract and a gold loan business that has announced 30 percent ROE in its latest quarterly result and is touted by the bulls to be the next billion-dollar opportunity. No one on our team is allowed to utter the famous last words of many ...more
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While the national highways in India are now better than highways in the United States, that’s not saying much.
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When I assess the finances of listed education businesses in a large market like the United States, I find that most don’t earn even their cost of capital. For example, in 2021, the U.S. education company with the most considerable market value was Grand Canyon Education, whose market capitalization was only about $4 billion.
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Real estate businesses in India aren’t known for Gandhian governance, to put it mildly.
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“Everyone sees countless people dying every day, but they act and think as if they will live forever.” Yudhishthir’s insight was that we are strangely blind to a fact that is blindingly obvious.
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Investors, unlike biologists, are rarely filled with doubts and uncertainties.
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In contrast, an investor, at the end of a one-hour group meeting with a company he has never met before, confidently declares that he has found the next P&G.
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