A Perfume that Smells Like Poop? - By Bill Gates (LINK)
Sustainable Sources of Competitive Advantage - by Morgan Housel (LINK)
Someone with a 110 IQ but the ability to recognize when the world changes will always beat the person with a 140 IQ and rigid beliefs. The world is filled with smart people who get nowhere because their intelligence was acquired 20 or 30 years ago in a vastly different world than we live in today. And since intelligence has a lot of sunk costs – college is expensive and hard, for example – people tend to cling to what they learn, even while the world around them constantly changes. So the ability to realize when you’re wrong and when things changed can be more effective than an ability to solve problems that are no longer relevant. This seems obvious until you watch, say, Kodak or Sears trying to solve 1980’s problems in the 2000s.
Quality Companies, Compounders and Value Traps (LINK)Marc Andreessen promotes the idea of “strong beliefs, weakly held,” which I love. Few things are more powerful than strongly believing in an idea (focus) but being willing to let go of it when it’s proven wrong or outdated (humility).
Jim Chanos on Trump's Election Win and Stocks [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK)
Theranos Whistleblower Shook the Company—And His Family (LINK)
Amazon.com’s Marketplace Concept Spreads to Other Retailers [H/T Matt] (LINK)
Unmoored From Reality: DryShips Halted After 1,500% Post-Election Rally [H/T Matt] (LINK) [It dropped quite a bit when it re-opened, though still up significantly from where it was before the election.]
Default Clouds Hang Over Commercial Property Sector [H/T @IntrinsicInv] (LINK)
Want to Really Make America Great Again? Stop Reading the News. - By Ryan Holiday (LINK)
Freakonomics Radio: How to Make a Bad Decision (audio) (LINK)
Some of our most important decisions are shaped by something as random as the order in which we make them. The gambler's fallacy, as it's known, affects loan officers, federal judges -- and probably you too. How to avoid it? The first step is to admit just how fallible we all are.TED Talk - Steven Johnson: How play leads to great inventions (LINK)
Related book: Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World