Having a finance degree did not make me a better investor.

Rather, I learned 10x more about investing from Twitter University.

🧵 Here are 5 threads from world-class Fintwitters.

At 98, Munger is as sharp as ever.

His recent 2-hour sharing at $DJCO was 🔥

Talked about $BABA, $COST, $ATVI, crypto, interest rates, envy, antitrust, the great resignation, growth vs value investing and MORE.

Here are my notes:

1. Let's get the white elephant out of the room and talk:

$BABA

Why invest in China? And why Alibaba?

To find out more about $BABA without going through 10 years of annual report, check out my deep-dive here.

More than 20,000 people have viewed it in 7

2. It's no secret that Munger has a contempt for crypto

While there are legitimate use cases (IMO), Munger hates the negative spillover it brings.

3. On whether there'll be a major interest rate increase

Japan managed to maintain low interest rates and reduce their debt without compromising their living standards.

But we're not sure if the U.S. can pull off the same trick.

Here's why:

Peter Lynch averaged 29.2% annual return between 1977 to 1990.

His books One Up Wall Street and Beating the Street offered great insights into his success.

Here are my top 10 lessons from the legend:

1. This quote was so good Warren Buffett cited it in his shareholder letter.

“Selling your winners and holding your losers is like cutting the flowers and watering the weeds.”

2. Volatility is the price of admission.

“People who succeed in the stock market also accept periodic losses, setbacks, and unexpected occurrences. Calamitous drops do not scare them out of the game.”

3. On how many stocks you should own.

"Owning stocks is like having children. Don't get involved with more than you can handle."

4. On making mistakes.

"There's no shame in losing money on a stock. Everybody does it. What is shameful is to hold on to a stock, or worse, to buy more of it when the fundamentals are deteriorating."

Jeff Bezos left a lucrative career at 30 to start an online book store.

His letters since founding Amazon are full of insights into investing, decision making and life.

I have consumed all of Jeff's letters and interviews since 1997.

This is what I have learned:

1. The regret minimization framework

Jeff would imagine himself at age 80, "What have I regretted in life?"

And work backwards to guide your present decisions.

Most of our regrets are from the things we didn’t try, the risks we didn’t take, or the paths we didn’t travel.

2. It's all about the long-term

Competition is sparse when you are competing in decades.

Many companies make decisions based on the next three to five years.

Bezos is investing for the next two decades.

3. Maximizing shareholder value

A company's value today is the present value of future cash flows.

85% of a company's value are from year 3 and beyond.

Invest today to ensure that a company achieves durable growth in the future.

4. Focus on the customers

Focus on solving problems and the share price will take care of itself.

Share prices in the short-run has no indication as to how well the company is doing.

Marathon Asset produced several iconic investors such as Nick Sleep and Jeremy Hosking.

Their letters from 2002 to 2015 provided a treasure trove of insights into their investment frameworks and how they look at the capital cycle.

Here are my main takeaways:

1/ Periods of high profitability leads to reckless investments.

When profits are high:

-Boost CAPEX with little regard for ROIC
-Competitors will follow suit to avoid losing market share
-CEO's incentives aren't aligned with shareholders

It's a race to the bottom.

2/ The capital cycle will swing down when investments are taken too far.

Forecasts that were reasonable will now look overly optimistic.

Profits collapse, management teams are changed, CAPEX is cut, and consolidation begins.

This will pave way for a recovery of profits.

3/ Asset growth matters

Consider both asset growth at the company and industry level.

Avoid industries where assets are growing rapidly.

4/ We tend to extrapolate

When overdone, investments that appear logical at first can become disastrous.

We have a tendency to forecast linearly when many things are cyclical.

Examples: trade cycles, credit cycles, etc

In 2009, an unknown investor from Russia came out of nowhere to make one of the greatest late stage venture bets in the history of Silicon Valley. Why did FB choose an outsider to lead our Series D round? Here’s the inside story:

2 years earlier we famously raised from Microsoft at $15B valuation. That turned out to be a mistake because it set us up for a painful down round. By 2009 growth had slowed and the financial crisis crushed advertising. “Smart money” bids for our Series D were coming in at $3-6B.

We had a high bid at $8B from a respected valley firm, and we had a wildcard bid from Yuri Milner/DST who offered to top any other bid by 20%. We initially chose the reputable firm at a lower price, but they refused to drop a ratchet provision so we decided to give DST a chance.

Yuri understood 2 things that nobody else could see at the time: 1/ He had seen virtual currencies in Eastern Europe and China, believed FB could make money this way. 2/ We were offering secondary shares at 40% discount to preferred, DST was the only firm who valued this.

Yuri not only offered to clear the highest bid by 20%, he also offered to let Zuck vote all of his shares including any secondary shares purchased from early employees. This allowed Zuck to consolidate his voting power.

RIPPLE’S DUE PROCESS CLAIM:
In @Ripple’s Answer it asserted a defense that the SEC should be barred from claiming #XRP is a security today because it violates Due Process and principles of Fair Notice. Previously, I discussed a similar concept called the doctrine of equitable

estoppel. I explained the law protects a party from being harmed by another party's voluntary conduct. That conduct may be ACTIONS, INACTION, SILENCE, or ACQUIESCENCE. Although the SEC never declared XRP a non-security, for EIGHT YEARS it openly traded in unison with #ETH and

#BTC. During this time, some from the SEC, including Clayton, commented that #BTC and/or #ETH were not securities. For 8 years the SEC’s actions, inaction, silence and acquiescence implied that XRP was also NOT a security. Let’s review a few of the SEC’s actions, inaction,

silence and/or acquiescence related to #XRP. (1) During the period of time the SEC claims XRP was a security, the SEC granted Ripple permission to take a minority stake in MoneyGram (MGI). Ripple invested $50 million purchasing approximately 9% of MGI. The SEC approved this

purchase of MGI with the full knowledge that Ripple would encourage MGI to use XRP as a cross-border utility token related to remittances. The SEC allowed the use of this so-called illegal security to be utilized not just by Ripple, but by MGI. The SEC admitted to this knowledge

Phenomenal article/compilation on "The Biggest Mistakes Investors Make". h/t @manualofideas @JMihaljevic 👏

cc: @dmuthuk @Gautam__Baid @saxena_puru

My fav pts in the thread below

Lot of great points on the importance of having a strategy, process, discipline, patience, self-reliance, awareness of risk, biases/emotions, learning from mistakes & more.

More ⬇️

Some more ⬇️

The last year has delivered great results to many Portfolios but Market conditions are always changing and it's important to ensure the Process and Portfolio are built to withstand whatever the Market throws at it in the short-term and sustain & succeed for the long-term.