Robert Herjavec on how Covid accelerated digital transformation

Covid was the greatest accelerator of business cycles in history.  Everything that's happening now - cloud, e-commerce, digital infrastructure - we all knew that was going to happen, we didn't know it was going to happen in two years.

~ Robert Herjavec, interview with Stuart Varney, Fox Business News, 4:00 mark, May 23, 2022

Ryan Holiday on reading

The purpose of reading is not just raw knowledge.  It's that it is part of the human experience.  It helps you find meaning, understand yourself, and make your life better.

~ Ryan Holiday, podcast host of The Daily Stoic

Warren Buffett on the value of time

The rich invest in time, the poor invest in money.

~ Warren Buffett

Tobias Lütke on Shopify competing with Amazon

If anything, Amazon is trying to build an empire and Shopify is trying to arm the rebels.  So maybe some of our customers might compete with Amazon at some point, but that would be super cool... so maybe, one day.

~ Tobias Lütke, tweet, October 11, 2019

Kevin Duffy on amateur hour at the casino (2021)

Christoph Gisiger: What's your general advice for investors who want to invest their money in a reasonable and prudent way in this challenging environment? 

Kevin Duffy: If you want to live off the grid and live off of fruits, berries or coconuts, that’s one thing. But if you want to accumulate wealth or protect it, you’re in the investment game. You don’t have a choice. So you have to ask yourself: Who are your competitors out there? First of all, I don’t want to compete in the short-term trading arena with high frequency traders like Ken Griffin, the CEO of Citadel. That’s like competing against Tiger Woods on the golf course. The reason why guys like Griffin are doing so well is because you have a bunch of amateurs trying to compete with them.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Next Bear Market Has Already Started," The Market/NZZ, July 1, 2021

Kevin Duffy on how great investors and companies are antifragile

Defense wins championships.  Great investors go to the head of the line by being prepared for a bear market and in a position to benefit from forced selling.  Likewise, great companies get stronger in recessions because they're built for survival.

~ Kevin Duffy, tweet, May 19, 2022

Warren Buffett on how accurately CPI measures inflation

I think overall, for a typical young family, the CPI probably underestimates the burden they have faced, in terms of their own living standards.

~ Warren Buffett, "Warren Buffett DESTROYS Consumer Price Index (CPI)," YouTube, May 4, 2022

Ernest Hemingway on happiness and intelligence

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Confucius: "We have two lives"

We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.

~ Confucius

Paul Volcker on the late '90s tech bubble

The fate of the world economy is now totally dependent on the U.S. economy, which is dependent on the stock market, whose growth is dependent on about 50 stocks, half of which have never reported earnings.

~ Paul Volcker, May 14, 1999

Kevin Duffy on the selfishness and irrationality of capitalism

Q: Why is libertarianism not generally called pro-capitalism?  Is it just a way of saying you support a more extreme version of free market capitalism?

A (partial): What I fundamentally dislike about libertarianism is how selfish it is.  I also resent how many of them assume their positions are preeminently “logical,” and that their own superior reasoning “proves” the superiority of their myopic worldview.  Human beings are not rational machines.  They are not fundamentally logical.  We are far more nuanced than that.

Duffy comment: You have a point. Individuals act in their own self interest.  They also can act irrationally at times, especially when in crowds. 

Fair enough, but shouldn’t we apply the same principle to government officials?  What puts them above these human foibles? 

The difference is that individuals trading with others must use persuasion, i.e. they have to make each other better off.  Call it selfish all you want, but free markets are mutually beneficial, win-win.  This doesn’t mean people don’t make mistakes or have regrets after the fact, but going into the trade, they only do so if they expect to benefit.  And when things don’t work out, that failure imparts information.  People learn. 

Government officials, on the other hand, use coercion.  THEY decide what is best for society and tell everyone what to do.  Resist and you end up in jail or worse.  The political class (the government and its cronies) lives at the expense of the populace, win-lose.  These people are far from selfless.  In fact, they lie, cheat and steal all the time. 

This is not to say the people have no say in the matter, but it is the majority who count, not the minority dissenters.  Government officials know this, which is why they constantly play to the crowd.  Their stock in trade is propaganda which works by simplifying the complex to a political slogan, playing on peoples’ fears and pitting one group against another. 

The defenders of such a system can only do so with semantics, calling mutually beneficial trade “exploitation” and government coercion “selfless.”  Sorry, but your system is built on brute force.  No amount of spin can give it moral superiority over a system of freedom.

~ Kevin Duffy, Quora, May 13, 2022

Brian Chesky on the future of the office

I think that the office as we know it, is over.  We can't try to hold on to 2019 any more than 1950.  We have to move forward.

~ Brian Chesky, "Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who recently announced that employees could work from home forever, calls the office an 'anachronistic form' and 'from a pre-digital age'," Yahoo Finance, May 8, 2022

Bill Watterson on the existence of intelligent life beyond earth

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.

~ Bill Watterson, American cartoonist and author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes

Chris Mayer on the patience required of long-term investors

Holding on requires a belief in some future that is not here yet.  Pessimism focuses on known problems and what’s right in front of us.

~ Chris Mayer, "Hold Fast: Tips for 100 Baggers," May 9, 2022

Hugh Hendry on the "glaringly obviously attractive" returns from the mining sector

The education - or miseducation - of the mining sector actually turns the odds in your favor as an external minority investor.  And because taking away the reflexive behavior to expand supply with higher prices simply means that higher prices are going to be with us longer, and so they're going to keep rewarding you as an investor.  So part of society is going to be on your ass saying you're morally corrupt.  It's them who are morally corrupt, but you've got to be able to take that on...  The returns from the extractive industry are just glaringly obviously attractive.

~ Hugh Hendry, Stansberry Investor Hour interview with Dan Ferris, 38:30 mark, May 2, 2022

H.L. Mencken on American journalism

American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.

~ H.L. Mencken

Will Rogers on good judgment

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. 

~ Will Rogers

George Kennan on NATO expansion after the Soviet Union collapse

I think it is the beginning of a new cold war.  I think the Russians will react adversely and it will affect their policies.  I think it was a tragic mistake.  There was no reason for this whatsoever.  No one was threatening anybody else.  This expansion would have the Founding Fathers rolling in their graves.  We have signed up to defend a whole series of countries even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.

~ George Kennan, historian who advocated a policy of Soviet containment during the Cold War, May 2, 1998