Austin Root on the 10-10-20 test for buying a stock

Before you buy your next stock, I want you to put it through the 10-10-20 Test.  To do so, you need to ask yourself three questions... 

1. Do I think this company is highly likely to be a bigger, more profitable enterprise in 10 years? 

2. Do I know this company's business model well enough to explain it to a 10-year-old? 

3. Am I comfortable putting at least 20% of my entire net worth into this stock? 

If you can answer "yes" to all three questions, congratulations...  You are well on your way to identifying a wonderful long-term investment. 

Now, to be clear, I am NOT recommending that you actually put 20% of your worth into your next stock purchase.  But I AM suggesting that you use these heightened thresholds to add incremental discipline to your investment decisions. 

You need to… believe in the business’s growth prospects… truly understand what makes the business tick… and have conviction enough in the attractiveness of the investment opportunity that you’d be willing to bet BIG if you had to. 

Your capital is precious.  It demands high standards.

~ Austin Root, LinkedIn post, January 24, 2023

Jim Chanos on the latest round of meme stock madness

Guy Adami: What does it say about the state of the market when you can see names like [AMC] move 100% one day and 100% the next day?  Is that mean we're closer to a bottom, in the middle of this whole thing?

Jim Chanos: Since the first quarter of 2021, which I keep saying was the most speculative market I've seen in my lifetime (the meme stocks, the SPACs, the NFTs, crypto), every time the meme stocks have taken off, it's been the end of the rally, not the beginning of the rally...  Every time retail come back into these names, to "squeeze the shorts" or do whatever they're going to do, it's a pretty good sign that people have lost their fear, and they're buying near bankrupt companies...

Bed Bath & Beyond's a wonderful example.  That ran earlier this month.  Their bonds are trading, I think now, at 4 cents on the dollar.  Four cents.  So if you really thought Bed Bath & Beyond was going to turn around and become a great company again, you would have a 25-bagger by buying the bonds, and nobody wants them.  But the stock, they love.  That makes no sense.

~ Jim Chanos, interview with CNBC in Miami, 16:50 mark, January 30, 2023

Kevin Duffy on the bull case for gold

Gold can be seen as an insurance policy against macro risks: inflation, hyperinflation, recession, depression, taxation and confiscation.  It competes with other perceived safe haven assets: fiat currencies, government bonds, consumer staples stocks and, some might argue, bitcoin.  The bull case is straightforward: black swans are lurking, gold’s competitors are lacking and sentiment is bearish.

~ Kevin Duffy, The Coffee Can Portfolio, p. 21, January 24, 2023

Kevin Duffy on China's culture vs. its government

While China’s one-party rule is not a system I would want to live under, America’s two-party democratic system comes with its own design flaws: constant political fights over the spoils of big government, costly election circuses every four years, and the divisiveness and binary thinking fomented by voters forced to choose sides.  For all of its political defects, the Chinese have created a culture that values education, hard work, saving and entrepreneurship.  Its people succeed everywhere they immigrate to, despite harsh discrimination in many cases.  China boasts the largest middle class in the world (and growing), understands the value of trade (win-win), thinks long-term and has largely avoided the suicidal woke energy policies of the West.

~ Kevin Duffy, The Coffee Can Portfolio, p. 21, January 24, 2023

Kevin Duffy on active investing

2022 was the year for active investing to shine.  Quantifying the opportunity set for active managers is difficult, but one attempt is to compare the Equal-weighted S&P 500 (RSP) to the Float-weighted S&P 500 (SPY).  Last year, RSP outperformed SPY by 6.56% after a long stretch of underperformance. 

Retail investors are convinced a change is not at hand.  In fact, they poured $278 billion into passive U.S. equity funds last year, pulling $232 billion from active U.S. equity funds.  Over the past five years, over $1 trillion has been yanked from active U.S. equity managers and placed in low-cost index funds.  (Passive now accounts for 58% of assets in the category.)  In other words, the index pond is overrun with fishermen and largely depleted.  Across the index divide, multiple lakes and streams are full of fish, but practically empty.

~ Kevin Duffy, The Coffee Can Portfolio, pp. 18-19, January 24, 2023

Kevin Duffy on the coming recession

The reason I expect the worst recession of this generation is that the excesses of the previous boom, fed by a decade of ZIRP (zero interest rate policy), must be cleansed.  The magnitude of the bust is proportional to the boom that preceded it, and this one broke all records.  A one-year, garden variety bear market won’t do the trick.  If ultra-low rates encouraged too much debt, borrowing more money, at significantly higher rates no less, can only dig the hole deeper.

~ Kevin Duffy, The Coffee Can Portfolio, p. 18, January 24, 2023

Kevin Duffy on the role of the fraudster

Does the scam artist serve a social function?  Sam Bankman-Fried unwittingly shed light on the corruption of many institutions: venture capital, elite universities, charities, professional sports, Hollywood, mainstream media, ESG rating services, regulatory bodies and the Democratic Party.  Remarkably, he was able to infiltrate their highest levels in the blink of an eye.  Just last May, SBF was rubbing shoulders with the global elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

~ Kevin Duffy, "FTX Collapse: Lessons for investors," The Coffee Can Portfolio, p. 8, January 24, 2023

Alasdair Macleod on China's saving culture

It is a savings ratio of 45% which is at the root of China’s power.  The lack of savings in America and its western alliance is their Achilles heel.

~ Alasdair Macleod, "The benefits of a saving culture," Goldmoney, January 5, 2023

Felix Zulauf on weaponizing the US dollar in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine

[T]he Biden administration has made many blunders, but that was the biggest by far, weaponizing the U.S. dollar at the SWIFT payment system because that taught the world that is not as close and friendly to the U.S. as some others, that we should not hold our reserves in the U.S. dollar.  Therefore, the U.S. dollar's role as the major reserve currency is beginning to decline.  I think that China cannot store its reserves in U.S. treasuries any longer.  And I think they know that as well as I do.  And therefore I believe that in the current cycle you will see that there will be a shift, once the U.S. dollar has topped...  Those countries will put their reserves into stuff, into hard assets, that they can store within their own national boundaries.  And nobody can freeze those assets...  I think this was so dumb, so stupid, by the U.S. government, it's unbelievable.  They basically terminated the dollar system.

~ Felix Zulauf, interview with Adam Taggart, Essential Investing, 10:05 mark, December 27, 2022

Felix Zulauf on private sector shrinking in the West and growing in China

In think the private sector is constantly shrinking relative to the government sector.  We see that going on everywhere, even in the U.S.  In the U.S. we have jumped from the low 20% several years ago; we are now up to the upper 30% of government share of GDP.  In the European Union we are at 59%, so more than half.  In France we are at 64%.  In China we are at 35%, and I have been traveling to China when it was at 100%.  They have gone in the other direction.

~ Felix Zulauf, interview with Adam Taggart, Essential Investing, 8:25 mark, December 27, 2022

WSJ: "Gold bugs could be in for a long wait"

After a big rally early in the year, gold has lost much of its shiny appeal.  To regain that luster it will need to win against a formidable opponent—King Dollar. But with economists and business leaders still sending contradictory messages on the economy and the Federal Reserve still firmly focused on clipping inflation’s wings, gold bugs could be in for a long wait.

~ Megha Mandavia "Only the Fed Can Return Gold's Luster," The Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2022

Alvin Toffler on history

If we do not learn from history, we shall be compelled to relive it.  True.  But if we do not change the future, we shall be compelled to endure it.  And that could be worse. 

~ Alvin Toffler

Alvin Toffler on survival and change

The first rule of survival is clear: Nothing is more dangerous than yesterday's success. 

~ Alvin Toffler

Jeremy Allaire on the difference between stablecoins and bank deposits

FDIC exists, actually, because banks don't hold your money on a full reserve basis.  They take your money and then they lend it out eight times over.  The insurance exists because the banks actually don't have your money.  They've lent it out a bunch of times.  And so it's really a protection if there was a run on the bank that there would be some coverage for people.  Electronic money is much more conservative.  We are required by law to hold one-for-one reserves.

~ Jeremy Allaire, Circle co-founder, Yahoo!Finance interview in Davos, 3:45 mark, January 22, 2023

Orlando Bravo on his firm's $100 million investment in FTX

Q: Finally, I have to ask about your investment in FTX. 

A: It was obviously a mistake.  And we have personally apologized to investors in our growth fund.  It wasn’t a large investment—$100 million—but it was a big mistake and an embarrassing one.  It wasn’t a diligence mistake.  Diligence mistakes are when you miss a lawsuit, or you miss a trendline.  This was a judgment mistake.  I said even before the issues at FTX that we’re not going to make any more crypto investments, because I was not loving the business practices we’re seeing in crypto. 

~ Orlando Bravo, co-founder of private equity firm Thoma Bravo (over $120 billion AUM), "He Might Be Tech’s Last Bull. Here’s Why the Founder of Thoma Bravo Is Still Buying.," Barron's, January 21, 2023

Mary Callahan Erdoes on the mood in Davos

I would say the tone here, having come here for the past decade, is less depressed than it often is, which is a good sign of hope of what's happening out there in the world, having come off of the most difficult year for a balanced portfolio, 60/40, whether you were in stocks or bonds or anything in between.  It was pretty rough sledding and so I think everyone's happy that that's behind us and looking forward.

~ Mary Callahan Erdoes, JPMorgan Chase, Bloomberg TV interview in Davos, 0:20 mark, January 18, 2023

Stephen Schwarzman on China reversing harmful policies of past 2 to 3 years

What you're seeing, which some of us expected, is after the Party Congress in October, China has reversed most of the policies that it put in over the previous two to three years which were really slowing their economy and creating a variety of other issues.  The Chinese are infinitely practical.  This wasn't working out well and so they're changing it.

~ Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone CEO, CNBC interview in Davos, 1:00 mark, January 17, 2023

Kevin Duffy: "life is a compounding machine"

Life is a giant compounding machine: wealth, knowledge, relationships, habits, choices.

~ Kevin Duffy

Jamie Dimon: "this whole notion of decoupling is crazy"

Trade's not going away.  This whole notion of decoupling is crazy.

~ Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO, CNBC interview in Davos, 3:40 mark, January 19, 2023

David Solomon expects a soft landing

The macro psyche is evolving or breaking a little bit more to the positive...  I think the sentiment is softening a little bit and the view that the chance of a softer landing, both in the U.S. and Europe, is actually increasing.  Our economics team has been pretty "soft landing" over the last 6 months...  Our economics team, even last weekend, went and said that they are now not calling for recession in Europe.  The improvement in the energy situation, the reopening in China, they actually see as a little bit more positive. 

~ David Solomon, Goldman Sachs CEO, CNBC interview in Davos, 6:40 mark, January 18, 2023

Jane Fraser sees a "mild, manageable" recession

I think everyone's converging now in the States more around a mild, manageable recessionary scenario driven by the strength that we've got in the labor markets.

[...]

The vulnerabilities you normally expect heading into slower economic growth don't exist at the moment: strong corporate balance sheets, strong consumer balance sheets and banks in very good health as well.

~ Jane Fraser, Citi CEO, CNBC interview in Davos, 1:55 and 2:55 mark, January 17, 2023

Bernard Baruch on the stock market

Above all else... the stock market is people.  It is people trying to read the future...  What drives the prices of stocks up and down is not impersonal economic forces or changing events, but the human reactions to these happenings...  Th main obstacle lies in disentangling ourselves from our own emotions.

~ Bernard Baruch

Larry Summers: "soft landings are the triumph of hope over experience"

I'm still cautious, David, but with a little more hope than I had before.  Soft landings are the triumph of hope over experience, but sometimes hope does triumph over experience.  We have seen some slowing of inflation indicators  at the same time we've seen continued strength [in the economy].  That's gotta be what we all want to see.  I still think it's gonna be hard because we need a substantial amount of disinflation that goes beyond volatile components receding, but you have to recognize that the figures are better than somebody like me would've expected three months ago.  So it’s still a very, very difficult job for the Fed, but the situation does look a bit better.  

~ Larry Summers, interview with David Westin in Davos, Bloomberg Television, January 18, 2023

Brian Moynihan: "It'll be a mild recession"

It'll be a mild recession, largely because the stimulus and other things, even though the Fed's raised rates, you see the capacity of the American consumer to keep going.  So basically a mild recession early next year.  But over the last year that's been constantly pushed out so we'll see what happens, but mild recession, slightly down for a couple of quarters and then back to slightly up and then more normal in '24 and into '25.

~ Brian Moynihan, CEO if Bank of America, Yahoo!Finance interview from Davos World Economic Forum, 0:15 mark, January 17, 2023

Craig Mellow on the Japan-China trade relationship

Beijing is Tokyo's largest trading partner, with bilateral trade clocking in at $164 billion last year...

"Japan can't survive economically without China's business, even if it's becoming more difficult to continue business as usual," says Shigeto Nagai, head of Japan economics for Oxford Economics.

Japan Inc. has tried to diversify...  But investment has shifted only marginally to lower-cost Asian nations like Thailand and Vietnam.

[...]

Mutual advantage leads to profit.  Japanese foreign direct investments in China returned 15% annually from 2015-20, compared with 6% in North America, Oxford Economics found.  The yen's 20%-plus plunge against the dollar over the past year will squeeze those American returns further.  Japanese executives, not surprisingly, name China as their top pick for future FDI.

[...]

Tokyo took a decoupling step of its own in April, pass the Act for the Promotion of Ensuring National Security Through Integrated Implemenation of Economic Measures.

[...]

Japan Inc. isn't so quietly pushing back.  "The accumulation of business activities over many years serves as a key foundation that supports bilateral trade," Masakazu Tokura, chairman of the famed Keidanren business lobby, told Chinese Premier (since deposed) Li Keqiang in an online meeting last month.

"In the U.S., a hard line in China has been a political unifier," notes Shihoko Goto, director for Indo-Pacific enterprise at the Wilson Center.  "In Japan, it has become a divisive issue."

~ Craig Mellow, "For Japan, Breaking Up With China Is Hard to Do," Barron's, October 29, 2022

Eric Johnston on using the unemployment rate as a contrary indicator

If you look at the past selloffs in the market, they've all started with a very low unemployment rate.  So February of 2020?  That was a 50-year low unemployment rate.  2007?  That was a 6-year low unemployment rate.  In the bubble of 2000, everything felt great in February of 2000.  We were at a 30-year low unemployment rate.  Things felt great and then... things completely fell apart.  So in the beginning of these things, there's a sense of complacency that goes where "maybe we can get through this."  But the reality is, is that it always feels this way in the beginning.  We go in cycles and I think over time, if you sold a 3 1/2% to 4 1/2% unemployment rate and you bought a 10% unemployment rate, you would do very well.  And right now we are towards the end of the cycle, and whether the cycle ends in 2023 or '24, it's probably on its last legs.

~ Eric Johnston, Cantor Fitzgerald, CNBC interview with Scott Wapner, 2:20 mark, January 18, 2023

Paul Wong on how China benefits from the West's energy policy of ESG and sanctions

Since the peak of the last secular bull market in commodities in early 2011, chronic underinvestment driven by cyclical factors and attention to ESG concerns (environmental, social and governance) have created structural supply shortages and tighter supply-demand balances than prior investment cycles.  And now, spillover from sanctions has taken a bigger bite from the supply.  For example, the U.S. has sanctioned countries accounting for 40% of the world's oil reserves (Russia, Iran and Venezuela), resulting in much of this oil trade flow going to China at steep discounts.  Furthermore, China continues to make inroads with the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council, an economic union of six oil producers, notably Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, etc.) for long-term oil purchases and investment in its upstream sectors (refining, storage, transportation, etc.).  The GCC accounts for another 40% of the world's oil reserves.  Facilities for settlement systems have been created (or nearly) for renminbi (RMB) settlement,10 currency swaps and foreign exchange transaction systems.  In short, we appear to be in the early days of an emerging "petroyuan" and another step in long-term de-dollarization.

~ Paul Wong, "2023 Top 10 Watch List," Sprott Monthly Report, January 9, 2023

Lauren Rublin: "few see a deep or lengthy recession in 2023"

[F]ew see a deep or lengthy recession in 2023. 

~ Lauren R. Rublin, moderator of the 2023 Barron's Roundtable, January 9, 2023

Roundtable participants:

If we have a recession, it will be mild.

~ David Giroux, CIO, T. Rowe Price Investment Management

The magic money tree is over.  That and a global energy shock will likely lead to a modest global recession.

~ William Priest, co-CIO, Epoch Investment Partners

If the Fed stays on course on rate hikes, we are going to have a recession.

~ Scott Black, founder, Delphi Management

My assumption is that there won't be a recession, even though we could have two quarters of disappointing GDP.  But any downturn will be brief, so I am assuming no recession.

~ Abby Joseph Cohen, Professor of Business, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University

January 16, 2023

Peter Zeihan on China: "they are going away"

There's no version of this where China comes through looking good.  And the challenge for the rest of us is to figure out figure out "how do we, in as smooth and quick as a process as possible, figure out how we can get along without them?"  Because they are going away.  And they're going away this decade, for certain.

~ Peter Zeihan, interview with Joe Rogan, The Joe Rogan Experience, January 7, 2023

My comment: 

The big reveal with Peter Zeihan is that he has an agenda: decouple with China.  If you press him on this, I'm pretty sure he welcomes US government policy to expedite the process.  There are several problems with this line of reasoning: 

1) If Zeihan is correct, the decoupling will happen naturally. 

2) Trade is mutually beneficial, i.e. cutting off the second largest economy in the world will inflict massive pain on the US economy, not just China's. 

3) Interfering in trade leads to conflict. 

I'm not suggesting China doesn't have its flaws (as do we), but if Zeihan actually cared about the Chinese people, he would encourage diplomacy and trade, not vilification and ostracism.

James Clear on writing a bestselling book

Write something timeless, write something universal, write something that fascinates you.  And do all of that with the intention of creating something genuinely remarkable, or that creates value for people.

~ James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, podcast interview, The Tim Ferris Show, 1:23:35 mark, January 4, 2023

Modern MBA: Airbnb is losing its competitive edge to hotels

While Airbnb continues to outperform the hotel industry in terms of scale and listings, the challenge the tech company faces today is the realization that quantity is not quality.  Safety issues, service inconsistency, guest volatility, intrusive hosts, privacy concerns and excessive policies have resulted in Airbnb travelers feeling more like burdens than guests to their hosts these days.  On the flipside, regulation has also caught up.  With mandatory city fees, licensing and permit costs now factored into each booking, Airbnb can no longer use the tagline that they're cheaper or more unique than a hotel when they're already being taxed like one.  And since affordability was a major driving force behind the company's early popularity, it's an open question mark as to how Airbnb will navigate these choppy waters ahead.  When the playing ground becomes level and price becomes equal across hotels and Airbnbs, service will inevitably become a competitive advantage.  The reliability, predictability and consistency in guest experience is really where hotels have continued to edge out Airbnb across business and leisure travel for the past several decades and why the industry as a whole doesn't think of Airbnb as a threat.

~ Modern MBA, "Why Airbnb Fails to Disrupt the Hotel Industry," 24:30 mark, YouTube, April 9, 2022

Charlie Munger on personality types to avoid

Crooks, crazies, egomaniacs, people full of resentment, people full of self-pity, people who feel like victims, there's a lot of things that aren't going to work for you.  Figure out what they are, then avoid them like the plague.

~ Charlie Munger

Eric Savitz on the costs of electric vehicles

As the electric-vehicle market grows, cracks are emerging in the sector’s business model.  Stellantis (STLA) CEO Carlos Tavares noted that it costs legacy car makers about 40% more, on average, to build an EV than a comparable gas-powered car.  He says auto makers are in the untenable position of either passing along those costs, resulting in high-price vehicles that won’t generate a mass market, or eating the additional outlays and hurting profitability.  He says that companies must find ways to absorb the extra costs while protecting margins and not pricing at levels unaffordable to the middle-class car buyer.  And they have to do that, he adds, while navigating through sharp swings in battery-related commodity prices.

~ Eric J. Savitz, "CES Returns With a Bang. The Optimism? Not So Much.," Barron's, January 7, 2022

Barron's: Semiconductors made in the US cost 50% more than those made in Asia

Morris Chang, the founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, has said the U.S. government’s push for domestic semiconductor manufacturing won’t be cheap for consumers, even after TSMC spends billions of dollars on new plants in Arizona. 

Chang has said that factories in the U.S. won’t be cost competitive with the firm’s Taiwan fabrication plants, or fabs. Chips currently made at the company’s Oregon site cost 50% more than the same semiconductors made in Asia, Chang said during an interview last year at the Brookings Institution.

~ Tae Kim, "Tech's Bill is Coming Due. We'll All Pay.," Barron's, January 7, 2023

Rolf Dobelli on the challenge of youth

Our sample sizes are too small, our decisions rushed - or, in the language of statisticians, not representative.  We rely on a false impression of reality, believing that with a few random spot tests we can find the man or woman of our dreams, our ideal job, the best place to live.  Sure, it might work out - if so, then I'm thrilled for you - but if it does, it will only be by a stroke of good fortune, and nobody should pin their hopes on that.

The world is much bigger, richer and more diverse than we imagine, so try to take as many samples as you can while you're still young.  Your first years of adulthood aren't about earning money or building a career.  They're about getting acquainted with the universe of possibility.  Be extremely receptive.  Taste whatever fate dishes up.  Read widely, because novels and short stories are excellent simulations of life.  Only as you age should you adapt your modus operandi and become highly selective.  By then you'll know what you like and what you don't.

~ Rolf Dobelli, The Art of the Good Life, "The Secretary Problem," pp. 192-193

Benjamin Franklin on war, peace and self-improvement

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

~ Benjamin Franklin

Horizon Kinetics: indexation and asset allocation models are broken

Investors now face questions they haven’t had to consider for decades.  Until this past year, the entrenched basketof-securities approach to investing meant one didn’t have to think, one just bought the recommended asset classes.  That approach is now in disarray.  It depended on a simplistic presumption that the prior 20 or 40 years of daily price data represented normality.  It couldn’t contemplate a change in those presumptions.  History is a lot messier.  That data, it turns out, described an anomalous period, not a normative one. 

It should now be clear that indexation and asset allocation models – at least as practiced – can no longer be relied upon as having predictive value.  Bonds, for instance.  Over the past 20 years, after taxes, they returned only about 2%, annualized.  Even accepting the government’s CPI calculation that inflation averaged only 2.5%, that means bonds had a negative real return, a two-decade loss of purchasing power.  That was not supposed to happen (on the reasoning that it hadn’t happened before).  And that was during a period of relatively benign inflation.  ‘Benign’ is not the likely caption for the next 20 years.  Rationally, one must rethink one’s approach to bond investing.  One must rethink other presumptions about the standardized approach to investing.

~ Horizon Kinetics 2023 investor letter, January 4, 2023

Murray Stahl

Dan Ferris on the complexity of markets

Just philosophically I think that people don't create markets; markets happen to human beings.  We are in markets like fish are in water and the fish don't control the tides or the wind or the waves or the currents or the temperature or any of that stuff.  And I don't think humans have the kind of control over markets that they purport or that many people believe, like the Fed.  They think the Fed controls the market and make it go up and down by lowering or raising rates.  And I don't think it works that way.  I think the market is going to do what it does.  It's extremely complex.  It's not 3-D chess, it's a million-D chess every day, and there are too many inputs, it's too complex, we can't control it, we can only participate in it.

~ Dan Ferris, "Top 10 Potential Surprises for 2023," Stansberry Investor Hour, 47:25 mark, January 4, 2023

Naval Ravikant on reading

Reading a book isn't a race - the better the book, the more slowly it should be absorbed.

~ Naval Ravikant

Evan Lorenz on rising interest expense for the U.S. government

According to the White House's Office of Management and Budget, the United States paid an average of 1.5% on its obligations in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, down from 1.6% in 2021 and 2.1% in 2012.  If we were to mark the $24.4 trillion of public debt outstanding to a 4% yield, interest expense would soar to $975.5 billion from the $357.1 billion paid last year.  The difference between those two figures - $618.3 billion - is not so far from the $779.7 billion defense budget.

Thankfully for Uncle Sam, interest rates do not reset overnight (and for that matter, too, they sometimes go down).  As of June 30, the average maturity on marketable Treasurys was 74.3 months, with 49% of debt maturing in three years or more.

~ Evan Lorenz, "Twisting in the wind," Grant's Interest Rate Observer, November 11, 2022

Jeff Bezos on passion

If you don't love your work, you're never going to be great at it.

~ Jeff Bezos