Liberty

https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/investing-13-billion-2019/ Sundar post about their 2019 investment plans:

Interesting piece about full-flow staged combustion rocket engines: https://hackaday.com/2019/02/13/the-impossible-tech-behind-spacexs-new-engine/

https://concentratedcompounding.com/some-thoughts-on-markel-after-a-tough-year/

It's beer ;D Essentially branded consumer discretionary purchases. They have decent brands (Molson, Coors) and an established distribution network. It's pretty cheap and was 10% off today. While the business may go thru ups-and-downs, especially in terms of management's execution (as we are seeing with other CPG's like Kraft-Heinz), I think product demand will remain relatively more steady (compared to say, Tide detergent). So it's basically, multiple is low, they have scale, brands should have staying power. Was just curious if there was more than met the eye to the thesis.

That's fair. What did happen, though, is that I did better than I would've otherwise done. Someone else might not have, though, but modifying what I actually did to change it to what you think someone else should've done does make it something other than "what actually happened".

Another one at Volaris and one at Vela: https://www.andarsoftware.com/servlet/eAndar.article/3572/Andar-Software-Acquires-DMC https://www.dataminesoftware.com/2019/01/08/flairbase-acquisition/ h/t

I did the same. What attracted you guys to this business? Just curious, I don't know anything about it.

I thought this was an interesting piece: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-12/the-colgan-air-crash-helped-keep-90-million-flights-safe Some interesting discussion of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19145347

Brand new in-depth two-part writeup about DWDP at Scuttleblurb (subscription required): https://www.scuttleblurb.com/dwdp1/ https://www.scuttleblurb.com/dwdp2/

Gates Foundation 2019 letter: https://www.gatesnotes.com/2019-Annual-Letter

Amazon has acquired Eero (if you listen to any tech podcasts, you're probably familiar with them). https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-11/amazon-will-buy-startup-eero-to-help-connect-home-devices

Comparing highly leveraged investments in an illiquid single asset that you can't easily sell is a fair comparison with an unlevered investment in the 500 biggest companies in the US (and mostly the world, since they have global sales) across multiple industries ??? Leverage cuts both ways. you can lose more than your whole equity if you lever up 4X... Lots of hindsight bias here. If the Canadian market had crashed during that period, there would be a lot less celebrating, especially because when you're this elevated, nothing says you'll bounce back anywhere close any time soon (took around 21 years after the last toronto RE crash). I mean, I know this time is different and it can't possibly happen again, but what if?

I don't understand the market selling off CHTR since the spike...maybe short-termism has taken hold for now? I would think sideways movement would be more likely, unless the spike is being used for another purpose...perhaps they stopped buy backs in anticipation that price declines will help get better shareholder value? Movements this short-term are almost all noise and no signal. CMCSA is also down, so probably just moving together.

Two new acquisitions at Volaris: https://diariodotransporte.com.br/2018/12/24/volaris-group-anuncia-aquisicao-da-empresa-1/ https://diariodotransporte.com.br/2019/01/23/cittati-passa-a-fazer-parte-da-canadense-volaris-group/ h/t @Pearnick again (he's faster than I am, what can I say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

I'm re-reading this today because it's been a few years since I read it. I figured I'd bump it up in case others want to refresh their memories, or if some of you haven't read this classic yet. Here's a version with nicer formatting: http://stuff.maxolson.com/the-art-of-stock-picking.pdf

Not sure which region you are in, but this is hard to believe considering that the housing investment would have been most likely leveraged...plus the tax exemption you'd get for the principal residence. I'm near Ottawa. We'd have paid for most of the house with cash, so not much leverage involved.

RBC estimate of capital deployed in Q4 (we'll find out soon enough): Via:

https://podcastnotes.org/2018/04/29/why-we-sleep/

If you look at the Canadian housing market in USD, it had a pretty big correction since 2014. But the idea remains that Canadians haven't seen their incomes increase at anywhere near the rate that housing has increased, that the difference is made up of debt, and that the only way this debt can be serviced is because of very low interest rates. Something that can't go on will stop at some point. I've always said that I have no idea when it'll happen, and I'm quite happy not to have bought since I've both done better in the market than Canadian housing since, and since my assets have been in USD instead of CAD, so I've had a double dip. I've also learned a lot about what I want in a house (having two kids does change a few priorities) and what neighborhood is best, so if I had bought back then, I probably wouldn't be happy with it now anyway and selling and buying has huge friction and headaches that I'm glad to have avoided.

I saw that at the recommendation of a friend. I thought it had some flashes of a really good movie, some really good scenes and characters, but that overall it didn't quite gel together and wasn't entirely satisfying.

Two new acquisitions at Harris: https://www.harrislocalgov.com/harris-local-government-acquires-sidwell-company/ https://www.harrislocalgov.com/harris-local-government-division-acquires-sw-minicomputers-inc/ h/t @pearnick

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-earthport-m-a-visa/visa-boosts-offer-for-earthport-in-battle-with-mastercard-idUSKCN1PX0KW

Bezos wrote this: https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146e3922310f

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-06/inside-wisconsin-s-disastrous-4-5-billion-deal-with-foxconn Yikes.

https://stratechery.com/2019/spotifys-podcast-aggregation-play/