A very simple heuristic for life: always be suspicious of people who don´t read
Shikun Ke from Yalehas unleashed AI to ‘read’ more than 1.1 million sell side research reports from January 1998 to the end of September 2023. Turns out, there´s significantly more forecasting power in examining what analysts write than just looking at their price targets or earnings forecasts.
As private credit is booming, a tiny rating firm says it’s the market's most prolific grader of private credit. Egan-Jones ratings are also said to be multiple notches more "generous" (and cheaper). Industry insiders worry trouble is brewing.
Timo Buss of Patient Capital is reviewing "The Nvidia Way". "What’s intriguing about this revolutionary idea to use GPUs for non-graphics work is that there was no “light bulb moment” from anyone inside NVIDIA who foresaw the new computing paradigm with strategic clarity. Instead, executives “stumbled onto it,” while researchers in academia independently explored what was adjacently possible in their fields as they looked for new ways to solve complex math problems using GPUs instead of CPUs".
Baillie Gifford and Stuart Dunbar had a few difficult years performance-wise. Nonetheless, the principles the lays out in his latest manual are very important. He emphazises what it means to be (a real) active investor, the value of quality shareholders, the importance of investment and R&D for real wealth creation and the perils of "governance free-riding" of index investors. A must-read for active investors regularily discussing passive with clients (see article below).
The chart is also from the BG manual. Shows the outperformance of "high-active share" combined with "low trading frequency".
Raysearch makes treatment planning software that helps medical physicists design radiation therapy treatments for cancer patients. Think of it as sophisticated 3D modelling software that calculates exactly where to aim radiation beams, how intense to make them, and how to shape them around tumors while avoiding healthy organs. Essentially, they provide algos to kill cancer cells (see article below).
Kyla Scanlon describes the 4 Phases of Institutional Collapse in the Age of AI. We´re currently in phase 2 (see article above). Phase 4: "What breaks here is a version of democracy. Algorithms bypass institutions, but institutions were our only mechanism for managing complexity at scale".
Algy Smith-Maxwell has a very interesting, wide-ranging discussion with Kiril Sokoloff, chairman and founder of 13D Research & Strategy. Sokoloff is a real "investment polymath". Don´t be deterred by the titel, it´s about much, much more than just nuclear...
Do you really want to piss off foreign investors if this is your position ?
Arte has a documentary on the Heysel catastrophe. Remember spending holidays at Granny´s. I was desperate to watch the game because of Platini. Back in those days you could barely watch international superstars on telly. She let me watch, because it was the holidays. So I watched (with no supervision...) until the German TV stopped the broadcast. To this day the pictures haunt me
Buffettesque words from JPow:
The concentration of (future) coaching talent at Barca 1996-2000 was insane. Chef coach 1997-2000 ? Louis van Gaal...
KochBank vs Goldman Sachs, JPM, Dt. Bank, Warburg, Hauck and the lot...(pictured LHS Christof Rümmelein)
