Top Reads, Listens, Follows & Takeaways of the week
Luck vs Skill in investing, Wrangell-St. Elias national park, and Andy Jassy
Takeaways from my top three:
-I think Morgan Housel is an exceptional writer and speaker. He brings up a really interesting point in his interview about how tough it is to separate luck from skill in investing. His comment brought Cathie Wood to mind for me - a really unique thinker, but was she just lucky? Does she survive in non-zero interest rate, non-stimulative policy world? Housel separates luck from skill by looking for those who have survived a calamity (or a few) and seeing who’s around afterwards. It’s almost like Matt Levine says, “the key skill of a hedge fund manager is not picking stocks that go up, but rather continuing to manage a hedge fund”. With bountiful data on the number of active managers that can’t demonstrate skill (esp. net of fees), perhaps the ultimate skill in investing is just disciplined behavior. Do you have a plan or a process? Do you stick to it?
-Wrangell-St. Elias national park in Alaska is larger than Yellowstone, Switzerland, and Yosemite combined. Inside of the park is McCarthy, a private town accessible only by plane. It used to be a ‘sin-city’ type of town to support the Kennecott Mine. Today, there is a small year round local population and a growing number of tourists. The video done by CBS is amazing. I’d love to visit.
-Andy Jassy seems like an exceptionally thoughtful CEO. His interview with Kara Swisher at Code was really interesting. He probably said the word, “customer”, 100 times - there’s no doubt what he’s focused on. Two big threats to Amazon were discussed - Antitrust and labor unionization. He made a point to note how compelling the compensation/benefits package is for fulfillment center employees and seemed to hint that unionization would likely adversely impact that. Swisher brought up the Amazon acquisition of One Medical. I’m excited to see how that’s rolled out. Everything about healthcare currently seems inefficient, expensive, poorly executed, etc. I’m looking forward to seeing Amazon give it a go. Jassy also seemed totally committed to streaming and content. Personally, that seems like such an intensely competitive and expensive space, but it seems that he views it as an additional way for Amazon to drive Prime adoption and to keep customers within their ecosystem.
Reads:
The Entrepreneur’s Epilogue and the Paradox of Success (here)
NASA’s DART Spacecraft Slams Into an Asteroid (here)
The best endowment investor nobody’s ever heard of (here)
Update on Oregon’s hard drug decriminalization (here)
Lost decades for US stocks (here)
Paul Graham - What I’ve learned from users (here)
If you needed a reminder, most pros can't beat the market (here)
Listens:
Morgan Housel on behavior, incentives, and investing through bear markets (here)
Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO, on antitrust, healthcare, and unions (here)
How I Built This: Sam Altman of OpenAI (here)
Herb Kelleher, cofounder of Southwest Airlines, on leadership and business (here)
Tim Steffen, Baird's director of tax planning, on tax saving strategies in down markets (here)
Wes Gray on building a portfolio to withstand different economic environments (here)
Vinod Khosla on breakthrough technology and venture investing (here)
Follow, Watch & Other great content:
Wrangell-St. Elias, the last community living inside a national park (here)
Denver Riggleman, a January 6th committee technical adviser, on 60 minutes (here)
A quick summary on Estate planning (here)
Antony Blinken, on 60 minutes (here)
Private Wealth blog on instagram (here)
Corey Hoffstein on portable alpha and return stacking (here)