Every December, a familiar ritual plays out across the financial sector. Wall Street’s premier investment banks gather their brightest minds, run complex econometric models…
So here is the thing about defensive investing: it requires a stomach for intense institutional boredom and an absolute willingness to look completely out…
Every time I see a thread on social media about Howard Marks, I notice the same pattern. Someone packages “Second-Level Thinking” as if it’s…
If you spend enough time roaming the corridors of modern finance academia, you will eventually be told that risk is a neatly packaged Greek…
If you flip on financial television during a market correction, you will eventually see Howard Marks. The anchors treat him like a secular saint,…
So here is the intellectual paradox that has bugged me for years: David Swensen did not actually want you to invest like David Swensen….
I hate the active-versus-passive debate because it makes smart people sound like they joined rival potato cults. You know the drill. One side screams…
I have a deep personal suspicion of asset allocation pie charts. They look clean, which is usually the first warning sign. A bad pie…
I do not naturally trust anything in finance that turns “you can’t get your money back” into a premium. When an investment deck frames…
I do not trust any finance idea once it becomes a pie chart. That is usually when the machinery disappears, the critical thinking shuts…
I don’t want to measure Charlie Munger’s influence on Berkshire Hathaway by counting the aphorisms printed on coffee mugs. That is how finance people…
I don’t buy the idea that Charlie Munger turned Warren Buffett from a value investor into a quality investor. That sounds tidy, which is…
I get suspicious whenever finance people describe a business partnership as “perfect harmony.” Perfect harmony is usually what people say right before a room…
I get twitchy whenever investors turn asset allocation into a holy war. The cigar-butt crowd acts like every highly profitable company is an overpriced…
The lazy version of financial history says Charlie Munger taught Warren Buffett to buy “wonderful businesses.” I’ll admit it: “wonderful business” sounds nice. Too…
The written tender offer arrived on Warren Buffett’s desk in May 1964 specifying a price of $11.3125 per share. Just weeks prior, Seabury Stanton—the…
The lazy version of the story is that Charlie Munger sprinkled quality fairy dust on Warren Buffett, teaching him to stop buying junk and…
The lazy version of Warren Buffett’s evolution is that he started as a Benjamin Graham bargain hunter, met Charlie Munger, discovered wonderful businesses, and…
The financial media loves a tidy evolution story. They’ve spent decades painting a picture of Warren Buffett graduating from Benjamin Graham’s classic value framework…
The conventional story of Warren Buffett goes something like this: a wholesome midwestern gentleman sits in an office in Omaha, drinks Cherry Coke, reads…