The Digest #189
Fifteen years, Eisenhower's farewell, A tribute to Charlie Munger, A profile of Wang Chuanfu, Forty hours in the Vision Pro, Fairfax Financial, Parks America, Howard Marks, Danny Myer, and more ...
Fifteen Years
The Rational Walk was launched on February 16, 2009. I had no master plan at the time, as I discussed in some detail on the tenth anniversary of starting the website. It simply became an expression of my interests at any given point in time.
Today, the website contains an archive of nearly 1,200 articles. Berkshire Hathaway is the most frequent subject, but it accounts for less than a quarter of the total. Aside from my work on Berkshire, I’m most proud of my book reviews and I have tried to add some value writing about personal finance. Since 2020, I have published nearly two hundred newsletter issues, which I now call The Digest.
Over the years, I have monetized very little of my work. Over 97% of my articles are free. Since I have a policy of removing paywalls after six months, eventually everything will be free. Whether this is a good business model or not remains to be seen, but it is a policy that I feel comfortable with and seems to strike a balance.
I am less interested in studying companies and investing in individual stocks today than I was in 2009, although there are several companies that I still follow closely, including Berkshire Hathaway. I remain interested in investing, personal finance, retirement, and other financial planning issues. These are the subjects where I can add the most value. If I do not have anything useful to say, I’m just wasting your time.
New writers sometimes ask about how to get started, but I think that anyone knows how to get started, especially today when anyone can launch a Substack in just a few minutes. What new writers probably want to know is how to build an audience of several thousand people quickly and find some way to monetize the audience. I do not have much advice to give other than to just start writing. If the writing is good, it will find an audience. Writing is as close to a meritocracy as I know of today. There’s no way to know if you will succeed without starting and giving it your best effort.
Many of you have been reading my work for many years and I appreciate having the audience and receiving feedback. I enjoy writing and plan to continue with The Rational Walk and the Great Books Journal, a new project that I started last year.
For the most part, writing does not seem like “work.” Writing in public helps to clarify my own thoughts while also hopefully being of interest to readers. As long as this continues to be the case, it seems like a win-win proposition to me.
Thanks for reading!
The Greek Way, February 8, 2024. A book review of Edith Hamilton 1930 classic on civilization in Ancient Greece, with a focus on the fifth century BC.
The Republic: Books I and II, February 9, 2024. What is justice?
Quote of the Week
The following quote is an excerpt from President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address delivered from the Oval Office on January 17, 1961. (Video, Transcript)
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
I would encourage readers to take the time to view the speech or read it and note the level of sophistication of the arguments the President made as well as the vocabulary he used. The speech was intended to be seen by a large audience at a time when Americans had a choice of just three television networks.
The speech was meant for the ordinary citizen, not for sophisticated elites.
Politicians never speak to citizens in this manner today. Our political discourse is sensational, surface level, childish, and insulting. It is useful to know that this was not always the case and does not need to be the case in the future if we demand a higher level of discourse from our leaders of all political parties. I still have some hope.
Articles
Charlie Munger: The Life and Legacy of our Late, Eminent Friend by Lawrence Cunningham, Winter 2024. “Munger’s absence from the scene is a seismic change, but to cite a favorite quote of yet another strong influence on Munger and Buffett, Professor Benjamin Graham: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Everything changes, but things also stay the same. A final Munger comment on Berkshire still rings true: ‘We’re not looking for a lot of change at Berkshire. We like things the way they are.’ Munger’s legacy endures, even if he is now among our ‘eminent dead’ friends.” (Financial History)
Wang Chuanfu: A Name Everyone in the West Should Know by
, February 8, 2024. Excellent profile of the founder of BYD. “Wang Chuanfu, the pudgy-faced chemist-turned-entrepreneur, is the main, if not the sole, reason why BYD, which meant literally nothing when the company was incorporated in 1995, became BYD, which now means ‘Build Your Dreams.’ The late Charlie Munger called him a ‘genius’. Yet, there is no comprehensive biography (that I’m aware of) about the man.” (Interconnected)All My Thoughts After 40 Hours in the Vision Pro by Tim Urban, February 9, 2024. A long article, including several videos, of an immersive experience in Apple’s new product. “The magical interface, the giant screens, the immersive experiences—they’re just unfathomably cool and awe-inspiring. It feels like a sneak peek at the 2030s.” (Wait But Why)
Ben Graham’s Train Station Blunder, February 11, 2024. Benjamin Graham’s granddaughter reflects on an early experience in his life that sheds light on the development of his character. “As we see from Ben Graham’s choice of reading material during his solo night at Pavonia Terminal, this boy thirsted for knowledge and devoured challenging literature—more than any teenager I’ve known. He’d rather devote his time to education than entertainment.” (Beyond Ben Graham)
The Reality of Mixed Reality by
, February 8, 2024. The possibility of millions of VR/AR addicts is one of my major concerns: “Society has already begun its descent into online addiction and the Vision Pro looks likely to amplify the factors that have kept our dopamine receptors well-fed since the adoption of smartphones. Technology moves faster than legislation. Being the terrible forecasters that we are, it also moves lightyears ahead before we have a chance to reflect on its consequences to society. Our delayed appreciation of the harm of social media usage has tainted our perception in that way. We fear the worst. I happen to fear the fears that we don’t know we ought to fear.” (Investment Talk)The Seven Samurai: Big Tech to the Rescue! by
, February 8, 2024. “To understand how much these stocks meant for overall market performance, recognize that these seven companies accounted for more than 50% of the increase in market capitalization of the entire US equity market (which included 6658 listed companies in 2023). With them, US equities had price appreciation of 23.25% for the year, but without them, the year would have been an average one, with returns on 12.6%.” (Musings on Markets)Fairfax Financial: The GE of Canada by Muddy Waters Research, February 8, 2024. Fairfax Financial is a well known Canadian “mini-Berkshire”. I have not followed the company in many years and include this link because I know many of my subscribers follow it or are invested in it. Given my lack of recent knowledge of the company, I am not suggesting that I agree or disagree with the analysis. h/t The Bear Cave
, February 11, 2024. “Poverty, even extreme poverty, is surmountable. What is nearly impossible to overcome is the instability—the psychological havoc—created by broken homes. Especially for boys. … Boys tend to be particularly responsive to environmental inputs and dysfunctional circumstances, at least in terms of visible, easily measured variables like graduation rates, future earnings, and likelihood of incarceration.” (Rob Henderson’s Newsletter)Three Students Just Deciphered the First Passages of a 2,000-Year-Old Scroll Burned in Vesuvius’ Eruption by Margherita Bassi, February 6, 2024. “The scrolls were discovered in Herculaneum, an ancient Roman city destroyed by Vesuvius’ eruption, in a villa that may have been owned by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. Nobody has tried to physically unroll them since the 19th century. As Marchant wrote for Smithsonian magazine in 2018, the Herculaneum papyri are ‘the only intact library known from the classical world, an unprecedented cache of ancient knowledge.’” (Smithsonian Magazine)
Want To Live A Longer Life? You Need to Understand V02 Max And How To Improve It by
, February 7, 2024. “V02 Max is the variable most closely related to longevity. Sure, longevity is a complex multifactorial process with a good sprinkling of luck involved. However, those with the highest V02 Max tend to have the lowest risk of dying early compared to those with low V02 Max levels.” (Dr. Paddy Barrett)Podcasts
Parks! America, Inc.: Failures in Capital Allocation, Corporate Governance, and Business Basics, February 13, 2024. 1 hour, 36 minutes. Video. Geoff Gannon and Andrew Kuhn discuss Focused Compounding’s 38% ownership interest in Parks! America and the rationale behind their current proxy contest for control of the company. (Focused Compounding)
Easy Money with Howard Marks and Edward Chancellor, February 8, 2024. 37 minutes. “Howard Marks is joined by Edward Chancellor to discuss ideas from Howard’s recent memo, Easy Money, which was inspired by Edward’s book, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest. They explore the history of interest rates, the profound impact they’ve had on financial markets, and the potential dangers of keeping them too low.” (Behind the Memo)
Danny Myer — The Power of Hospitality, February 13, 2024. 51 minutes. Transcript. “You better go into a community, whether it's in the United States or abroad, number one with humility, because no one in the world wants you to come in saying, ‘We're the big, smart, New York people. Lay down for us and eat our hamburgers.’ That's just not how the world works at all. So you go in with humility and you learn as much as you possibly can about the community. The same way I talked about learning as much as you can about a prospective guest in one of your fine dining restaurants.” (Invest Like the Best)
Multi-Bagger First Principles w/Ian Cassel, February 9, 2024. 1 hour, 9 minutes. Transcript. Video. “Ian Cassel on multi-bagger first principles … and biases he has had to overcome to continue improving as an investor. Ian is a full-time microcap investor and CIO of Intelligent Fanatics Capital Management. He is the founder of MicroCapClub.com and co-founder of the IntelligentFanatics.com.” (We Study Billionaires)
On Taking Notes in Books, February 9, 2024. 26 minutes. “In this episode, Erik Rostad shares how he takes notes in books and how it has helped him to remember what he reads.” (Books of Titans Podcast)
Related links on taking notes in books:
How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler (1940)
How to Mark a Book by Mortimer J. Adler, July 6, 1941
Review of How to Read a Book, November 13, 2015 (The Rational Walk)
Eisenhower on D-Day
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Thanks for all your articles over the years.
#189 is an excellent compilation. Thank you!!