⁠Finding Compounders
Joel Greenblatt co authored this article :

How the small investor can beat the market https://t.co/p88gaZjBa4
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⁠Investing visuals
$HIMS Q4 earnings tomorrow are highly anticipated. Here are 5 visuals breaking down the business 🧵👇 https://t.co/NwpRH922mo
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⁠Stock Analysis Compilation
Clearbridge Canadian Equity Strategy on Constellation Software (CSU) $CSU CN

Thesis: Constellation Software is a compounding success story specializing in acquiring niche vertical market software companies, supported by a strong track record of capital deployment and improved intrinsic valuation.

(Extract from their Q4 letter)
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⁠Quiver Quantitative
Last year, we published a report on a trade filed Senator Tina Smith that caught our eye.

She bought up to $200K of stock in a company called Artivion.

It’s a medical devices company.

Smith is on the Senate Committee on Health.

The stock has now risen 112% since then. https://t.co/g3z5h9tinz
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⁠App Economy Insights
📊 This Week in Visuals:
$WMT $BABA $BKNG $ANET $MELI $ADI $CDNS $NTES $NU $NET $XYZ $OXY $DDOG $LYV $TOST $LENOVO $GRAB $KVYO $GLBE $ETSY $LYFT $TRIP

Check out the latest earnings 👇
https://t.co/oo4QwtgVNx https://t.co/IChABqIhR5
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⁠Hidden Value Gems
great story on @JohnArnoldFndtn experience with Citadel

There are many paths to success, but all start with a niche!

Can confirm this story. As head trader at Enron when it filed for bankruptcy, I received many calls from firms that were recruiting. I was busy trying to close out the trading book and wanted to take some time to decide my future so didn’t take any meetings. But Citadel was by far the most aggressive. Other companies set up a few interviews with Enron’s senior people. Citadel interviewed seemingly everyone in the trading operation, all functions at all levels.

Citadel's team called me twice but I declined to meet. It was apparent to me that their intent was to reverse engineer the business and I wasn’t going to help them. They knew that people looking for a job, particularly if they didn’t have a fiduciary responsibility to a current employer, would be very free with info. Interview everyone and you get a 360 perspective of the industry, how the business makes money, its competitive edge, who the best employees are, etc. Citadel probably interviewed several hundred Enron employees. In the end, they maybe hired 5. Much more importantly, they built the framework for how to enter the energy business, which, as Ken notes below, has been an enormous success.

I did eventually talk with Citadel. On their third call to me, they asked if I would talk with Ken directly. I was at the airport heading to Aspen for a quick industry event. I didn’t know Ken personally but had great respect for what he’d built and so told his rep he could call me when I got back to Houston the following week. She said great, but called back a few minutes later with a question: if Ken flew to Aspen to meet me in person the next day, would I? Out of respect, I said of course. The next day I had a great meeting with him and later that week he offered me a job as head gas trader. I wanted to fully run an operation and thought there was more upside if I could have my own fund so I declined.

I ended up building my own firm starting with traders and hiring deep fundamentals expertise. Citadel started with the research (as is their DNA) and built up a trading operation around it. Both models worked fabulously well. I came away from the experience with an even deeper respect for both Ken and Citadel and remain friends with him to this day. I started with a niche, gas trading, built a niche fund and burnt out after 17 years. Ken started with a niche, convert arb, and built one of the most successful financial firms ever and has never tired.

blurb below via @ByrneHobart - John Arnold
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⁠Stock Analysis Compilation
Clearbridge Mid Cap Strategy on International Paper $IP US

Thesis: International Paper is a promising turnaround story under a new CEO focused on optimizing operations and improving pricing power amid favorable industry conditions.

(Extract from their Q4 letter) https://t.co/8RNVfiGIsk
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⁠Startup Archive
John Collison explains why it’s important for founders to be curious

John recounts a story about Magnus Carlson winning a chess trivia contest:

“He knew the most chess trivia out of anyone in this contest, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the world’s number one player has also studied the most about chess history.”

As the Collison brothers scaled Stripe from two people to 7,000 people, they studied how other businesses navigated similar stages:

“I think you have to be curious about what is required to run a good company at that stage… One thing we try to do is just spend a lot of time looking at all the other companies and what they’ve done. Not that you want to blindly emulate them, but you should at least understand them.”

He gives Apple and Amazon as an example:

“You cannot imagine two companies that work more differently than the two of those… Yet they’re both really successful models. And so I think it’s useful to have a framework for how that stuff works.”

John also recommends trying to learn the best mental models from various domains and industries:

“I don’t know if every founder has to do it, but I do think it’s probably effective to be able to just know the top mental models from finance, engineering, product, sales, and stuff like that. I don’t see how you could be that effective without being pretty curious on how to learn the most important mental models from this particular domain or function.”

Video source: @MillionStories (2024)
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⁠Finding Compounders
Why is calculating look-through earnings necessary ?

The second paragraph is important! https://t.co/Ji9lrRW8nq
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