The Weekend Bulletin (#33)

A digest of some interesting reading material from around the world-wide-web. Your weekly dose of multi-disciplinary reading.

---

Thank you, Apologies, an Announcement, and a Gentle Reminder.

First things first. Thank you for your comments on last week's issue. It was heartening to read some of the messages. For those of you that missed, we also had an elaborate discussion on the note that I had shared. Pasting a screenshot for easy reference; you can obviously go to the previous issue to read the whole conversation (or click on the image below).

Thank you also to everyone who took the survey. As promised, I have summarised the results of the survey here.

If you haven't taken the survey yet, I would request you to not see the results before you give your feedback - just to avoid biasing your views with the consensus. The survey is open for a few more weeks, and will not take more than 3-5 mins (based on the average time taken by those who have already filled the survey). You can fill the survey here.

[As a gesture of thank you, I will be giving out a book each to five of the most helpful feedbacks that I receive. This book can either be one that I select, or one of your choice, subject to a maximum value of INR 1,000 per book].

Since an overwhelming number of readers would like to contribute to the bulletin, I have created an email where you can share articles that you like. But a few things to clarify before that:

• Since I have a day job and this is an extracurricular activity, I hope you'd understand if I am not able to read your article immediately.

• To make things easy, please share a link to the article along with a short summary/note on why you like the article.

• Please do not mind if your article doesn't get published in the bulletin eventually.

I apologize if the above sounds draconian, but it's good to set some expectation straight upfront. Rest will evolve as with the whole of the bulletin. So here is the email address where you can send your articles: share2TWB[at]gmail[dot]com

Lastly, apologies for the length of this issue. A number of articles this week are long, with 3 being over 1 hour talks/interviews. But I do hope that you manage to get through them and find them interesting. As with last week, let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment.

Lets get on with it now....

---

Section 1: Investing Wisdom

• Last week I had shared a note that I had written about why 'Investing is simple but not easy’. Taking this thought forward, this article describes the 4 pillars of investing and elaborates on the 'not easy' part. What drew me most towards this article is the simplicity with which the author describes the 4 pillars.

"Most managers try to buy high quality businesses with strong economic advantages or competitive advantage selling at a discount to intrinsic value. I think one of the reasons that active managers underperform consistently is because everybody's doing the same thing. They're all approaching from the same perspective.  What we have found is more times than not, if you're just looking for high quality wide moat businesses selling cheaply today, you're going to find yourself in a lot of value traps."

• While it may sound surprising, WCM capital management does invest in to high quality businesses, but does it differently. In this talk, Paul Black talk's about the topsy-turvy journey of WCM Capital Management and their investment philosophy.

• I have myself been an analyst in the past, and now interact with many as part of my job. Here is a long thread (75 tweets) of advice distilled from the experience of one of us. A great read if you are still in the business.

Section 2: Mental Models & Behavioral Biases

• This is a crash course in mental models, or more appropriately, first principles. Peter Kauffman, author of the book 'Poor Charlie's Almanack', talks about the multidisciplinary approach to thinking - a very insightful yet simple talk. What makes this even more special is that there is not a lot of material that you'll find on Kauffman. In case you know of any, please share a link in the comments below (link has the transcript, and below is the audio recording of the talk).

Section 3: Personal Development

“Everybody has the will to win. People don't have the will to practice.”

• It's easy to dream big, but for most people the effort falls short. In this commencement talk, Bill Gurley, stitches together five different stories of extraordinary dedication, perseverance, and persistence to advise students to follow their passion and be obsessive about learning. The link has a video followed by the transcript of the talk.

• Let's say that you were given 100 bucks each day. You were free to spend those in any manner that you deemed fit, although you are told that you need to invest some of these 100 bucks to earn them back in the future. You have two implicit choices - either spend minimum on investing for the future, or save a lot for the future so as to get to a point that you wouldn't have to invest any. Most of us would, to a varying degree, choose the rest. After all, we chase financial independence. But why don't we think of of time as we think of money? Isn't our life bound by time, more than it is bound by money? What choice would you make if someone swapped the 100 bucks with 100 blocks of ten minutes each?

Section 4: Trivia

• This is a human life:

• This is how it looks in weeks:

• This is the life/achievements of some famous people:

• What about yours?

• Hard hitting? Want to change your life? Read this article and the articles under personal development, in case you didn't already.

* * *

That’s it for this weekend folks. Have a wonderful week ahead!!

- Tejas Gutka

[July 04, 2020]