"If you need to use a computer or a calculator to make the calculation, you shouldn’t buy it. It should be so obvious that you don’t have to carry it out to tenths of a percent or hundredths of a percent. It should scream at you. So if you really need a calculator to figure out that the discount rate is 9.6 percent instead of 9.8 percent — forget about the whole exercise. Just go onto something that shouts at you. And essentially, we look at every business that way. But you’re right, we do not sit down with spreadsheets and do all that sort of thing. We just see something that obviously is better than anything else around, that we understand. And then we act." --Warren Buffett (2009)
"I’d say some of the worst business decisions I’ve ever seen are those that are done with a lot of formal projections and discounts back. Shell Oil Company did that when they bought the Belridge Oil Company. And they had all these engineers make all these elaborate figures. And the trouble is you get to believe the figures. And it seems that the higher mathematics, with more false precision, should help you. But it doesn’t. The effects, averaged out, are negative when you try and formalize it to the degree you’re talking about. They do that in business schools because, well, they got to do something." --Charlie Munger (2009)
"It’s a terrible mistake to think that mathematics will take you a long place in investing. You have to understand certain aspects of mathematics. But you don’t have to understand higher mathematics. And higher mathematics may actually be dangerous and it will lead you down pathways that are better left untrod." --Warren Buffett (2009)
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Brent Beshore's 2019 Annual Letter (LINK)
The Money Men Who Enabled Adam Neumann and the WeWork Debacle ($) (LINK)
Notes on a Reading Framework - by Venkatesh Jayaraman (LINK)
Hidden Forces Podcast: The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Rise of Passive Investing & the Fall of the Free Market | Mike Green (LINK)
Starting Greatness Podcast: Marc Andreessen: “Was Netscape an Overnight Success?” (LINK)
The Investor’s Podcast Network: TIP273: Billionaire Jim Simons’ Quant Revolution w/ Gregory Zuckerman (LINK)
Related book: The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution
Odd Lots Podcast: How Online Dating Is Reshaping the Entire Economy (LINK)
Related paper: The Dating Market: Thesis Overview
There’s No Such Thing as ‘Quality’ Time - by Ryan Holiday (LINK)
Jupiter is still really weird: A new monster storm has formed around its south pole - by Phil Plait (LINK)