After 13+ years of running this blog, I’ve decided to turn Value Investing World into a fee-based newsletter. There will still be free editions of the newsletter, but the majority of the material will be for subscribers. Further details are below. But first, let me thank everyone for reading this blog over the years. Thank you! I’ve met many of you in person and appreciate you coming here as a way to help you filter through all the great content there is to read out there. Going forward… The new landing page for Value Investing World is: valueinvestingworld.substack.com By signing up, yo ..read more

"It's one thing to have an opinion, and something very different to act as if it's right." --Howard Marks The CFA Institute's Virtual Conference [Howard Marks, Peter Zeihan, and others] (LINK) Platforms in an Aggregator World - by Ben Thompson (LINK) All six parts of Matthew Ball's & Jacob Navok's primer on Epic Games (LINK) The Rise of TikTok and Understanding Its Parent Company, ByteDance (LINK) What Is Clubhouse, and Why Does Silicon Valley Care? (LINK) The 'Don't Worry, Make Money' Strategy Trouncing The Stock Market By 30 Percentage Points (LINK) Mortgage Credit Tight ..read more

"We had to decide what are the fundamental directions we're going in, and what makes sense and what doesn't. And there were a bunch of things that didn't. Micro-cosmically they might have made sense. Macro-cosmically they made no sense. When you think about focusing, you think 'Focusing is saying yes.' No. Focusing is about saying no." --Steve Jobs (1997 WWDC) Netflix: Cooked? - by Stephen Clapham (LINK) The Brooklyn Investor blog: Wow! (LINK) Nassim Taleb in conversation with The Economic Times (video) [H/T Linc] (LINK) Hong Kong National security law; Mocking Trump; Two Se ..read more

"...most investors think quality, as opposed to price, is the determinant of whether something’s risky. But high quality assets can be risky, and low quality assets can be safe. It’s just a matter of the price paid for them. . . . Elevated popular opinion, then, isn’t just the source of low return potential, but also of high risk." --Howard Marks Peter Zeihan chats with Grant Williams (video) (LINK) Related book: Disunited Nations Epic Games Primer - by Matthew Ball & Jacob Navok (Part 1, Parts 2 & 3) Millions of Americans Skip Credit-Card and Car Payments ($) (LINK) About 15 m ..read more

From the October 2008 Graham & Dodd Breakfast (via Outstanding Investor Digest): In terms of our firm, I tried so hard to learn the lessons of 1998 in particular, which were: Don’t be unprepared for something out of the blue that’s really bad.  To some extent, we were prepared this time.  However, you can never be prepared enough.  We had a lot of macro protection in terms of credit default protection on bonds where we were just betting that credit spreads would widen. That’s been incredibly helpful.  But we’ve gotten really tired of buying market puts, or anyth ..read more

For those interested.... The 5th Annual Value Symposium is back on. Not in Toronto (as originally planned), but via video and scheduled for May 27, 2020. The event has several portfolio managers scheduled to discuss their favorite ideas in a TED Talk format along with ample Q&A time for all attendees. You can buy your ticket ($29) for the virtual event HERE. For more information on the event and speakers, you can email info@YYXToronto.ca. *** Gabelli's Omaha (Virtual) Research Conference | Berkshire Hathaway Valuation | May 2, 2020 [with Chris Bloomstran] (video) (LINK) Lollapalooz ..read more

“Instead of a discussion of risk (which is both predictive and sissy) I advocate the notion of fragility, which is not predictive—and, unlike risk, has an interesting word that can describe its functional opposite, the nonsissy concept of antifragility.” --Nassim Taleb (Antifragile) The Acquirers Podcast: Tulip Mania: Chris Bloomstran on Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway (LINK) Related previous post: Semper Augustus Investments Group: 2019 Annual Letter Oaktree’s Howard Marks Says Fed Support Isn’t Forever, Distress Coming (video) (LINK) Apollo Asia Fund: the manager's report for 1Q20 ..read more

"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves." --Lao Tzu  Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway sold a substantial amount of U.S. Bancorp stock this week (LINK) A good post via the Berkshire Hathaway message board at The Motley Fool [H/T Linc] (LINK) Full video of Stanley Druckenmiller at The Economic Club of New York (LINK) Full video of David Tepper's CNBC call-in yesterday (LINK) A Viral Market Update VIII: A Crisis Test - Value vs Growth, Active vs Passive, Small Cap vs Large! - by Aswath ..read more

Amid the Coronavirus Crisis, a Regimen for Reëntry - by Atul Gawande (LINK) Scanning for answers to a pandemic - by Bill Gates (LINK) David Tepper says this is the second-most overvalued stock market he’s ever seen, behind only ’99 (LINK) Druckenmiller Says Risk-Reward in Stocks Is Worst He’s Seen (LINK) Daniel Yergin at The Economic Club of New York (video) (LINK) Related book (September release): The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations BIS paper: US dollar funding markets during the Covid-19 crisis - the money market fund turmoil (LINK) BIS paper: US dollar ..read more

Link to Memo: Uncertainty In investing, uncertainty is a given – how we deal with it will be critical. Read Howard Marks’s latest memo, in which he discusses the value of understanding the limitations of our foresight and “investing scared ..read more