“If you really want to grow trees, pray for rain but don’t neglect to water your seeds”
Monthly Archives: January 2013
The Trinity of Value Investing
Countdown to Zero
This is insane. A time-lapse map of the 2,053 nuclear explosions since 1945. Starts off kind of slow but the ’60s get crazy.
For a good movie about nuclear weapons check out Countdown to Zero
A Few Things To Look Forward To
This is Your Brain on Behavioral Economics
Any questions?
Source: The Globe and Mail
How to Solve a Banking Crisis
If this blog was in existence during the 2008 financial crisis my disgust for enormous, too big to fail banks would be well documented by now. I might as well give you a flavor of that disgust here and now.
Below is an interesting interview with Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson on their approach to solving a banking crisis. Hint: it does NOT involve tax payer bailouts.
“These were private companies operating fundamentally like private companies, rewarding the bankers and the shareholders, so why when they fail should ordinary people, taxpayers, teachers, nurses, workers, pay the price and bear the burden?”
Why, oh why, is this approach isolated to Iceland?
There are in fact mechanisms in place (and have been for some time) to deal with banking crises. They involve the FDIC stepping in and taking the bank into receivership – during that time failing institutions can be restructured without any loss to depositors or counter parties. What the bail outs really amounted to was bailing out the bond holders of the banks (the investors that lent the banks money so they could leverage their bets 30:1 (i.e. for every dollar that the bank put in they borrowed $30).
Jon Hussman lays this out beautifully here. To use Hussman’s example to illustrate the point:
“Look at Bank of America’s balance sheet, for example. Reported assets are $2.261 trillion. Against that, liabilities to depositors amount to less than half that, at $1.038 trillion. Add in $239 billion for securities that they are obligated to repurchase, $129 billion in trading account and derivative liabilities, and $155 billion for accrued expenses. Now you’ve covered counterparties, as well as vendors or others who might have invoices outstanding. Even then, and you’re still only up to $1.561 trillion of the liabilities. The remaining 31% of Bank of America’s liabilities represent obligations to its own bondholders and equity of its own shareholders. This is well beyond what is sufficient to buffer any loss that the company might take on its assets, while still leaving customers and counterparties completely whole. To say that Bank of America can’t be allowed to “fail” is really simply to say that Bank of America’s bondholders can’t be allowed to experience a loss.”
This is very much an abbreviated solution to a banking crisis but hopefully you get the idea.
Searching for Sugar Man
Check out the documentary Searching for Sugar Man. It’s an incredible story about Rodriguez, a singer / songwriter from Detroit that despite being incredibly talented never had any measure of success in the US. However, in Cape Town South Africa he was literally more popular than Elvis. What’s interesting is that EVERYONE in Cape Town not only knew about Rodriguez but, as the story in Cape Town goes (and there were many versions), they believed he tragically committed suicide on stage.
The documentary chronicles the search for what happened to Rodriguez and the man they discovered.
Racist Ski Trails
Simply amazing.
S&P’s 10-ish Step Guide to Equity Research
I would argue that only steps 1-8 are necessary for your own bottom-up analysis. You can live without step 2. Also understand that your results from step 3 are likely to be wrong – don’t let a fancy model fool you into thinking you can predict the future. Building a model is helpful for understanding the business and getting some sense for what is priced in so I don’t advocate skipping it entirely.
Inside the VC’s Mind
Fantastic infographic outlining the general thought process around early stage investments. Yes it’s a simplification but it’s a damn good outline. (link)
- Team
- Product
- Traction
- Market Opportunity
- Valuation
- Funding
- Etc.
I especially like the “three asses rule”:
- Smart ass team
- Kick ass product
- Big ass market