A Father’s Lessons for a Good Life

Here are few things I thought were worth sharing with you:
 

• I made a pocket-zine for my kids that contained some lessons on living a good life. They loved the idea and the lessons. I loved their smiles. 🙂
   
  Click here to download the PDF version.
  
  

• From the archives: The Most Powerful Mental Model for Identifying Stocks
   

• Howard Marks’ latest memo is out, titled Time for Thinking. He has delved deeply into understanding and explaining the impact of Coronavirus, moves by central banks, and the impact of low-interest rates on equity valuations. Marks also writes about large tech companies whose valuations have largely powered Wall Street’s recent rally –
  

  It certainly can be argued that the tech champions of today are smarter and stronger and enjoy bigger leads than the big companies of the past, and that they have created virtuous circles for themselves that will bring rapid growth for decades, justifying valuations well above past norms. Today’s ultra-low interest rates further justify unusually high valuations, and they’re unlikely to rise anytime soon.

  And then he leaves a word of caution –

  When I first entered the business in 1968, the companies of the Nifty Fifty – deploying modern wonders like computing (IBM) and dry copying (Xerox) – were likewise expected to outgrow the rest and prove impervious to competition and economic cycles, and thus were awarded unprecedented multiples.

  In the next five years, their stockholders lost almost all their money.

  He then touches upon the opaqueness of the stock market, and writes –

  We reach our conclusions, limited by the inadequacy of our foresight and influenced by our optimistic or pessimistic biases. And we learn from experience how hard it is to get the answer right. That leads me to the end with a great bit of wisdom from Charlie Munger concerning the process of unlocking the mysteries of the markets: “It’s not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid.”

• Without doubt, India has worst disconnect between stock rally, gloomy economy.
   

• Morgan Housel writes about a few things that always change, never staying in one place for long, like –
  

  Book value is what investors paid most attention to during the early 20th century. Ben Graham mentions it twice as often as the phrase “net income” in his classic book The Intelligent Investor. Then it kind of faded away. Profits became the metric of choice for most of the late 20th century.

  At other times dividends were the prized metric. In the late 1990s it was page views. In the mid-2000s, user growth.

  If Uber was a company in 1985, when investors obsessed over free cash flow, it would be considered a joke. But since it exists in the 2010s, when investors mostly care about revenue growth and brush aside profitability, it became a darling.

  Investment facts are always changing. But prediction is doubly hard because the facts investors care about and pay attention to – which is what makes facts relevant – change all the time. Not just by industry, but for the market as a whole. They change by economic condition, generation, and when a compelling story about a new metric finds its way into enough people’s heads.

• How do you keep your temper while stuck at home? Dan Ariely, the remarkable behavioral economist, answers questions about quarantine stress, dieting while working from home and getting over a break-up.
   

• Meditation: “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” ~ Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
  * * *
  That’s about it from me for today.

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  Stay safe.

  Regards,
  Vishal