Category: Charts & Graphs
Investing Errors Come From Psychology, Not Information — Charlie Munger (2 of 2)
“A latticework of mental models” describes ways that Charlie Munger sees intelligence and wisdom. Mental models describe more than simple IQ, or Intelligence Quotient. Munger Avoids Investing Errors by Many Mental Models Munger believes a wise person is best served by 80 to 90 mental… Continue reading
Angel Investing Not As Prevalent nor Effective As You May Think
Angel investing has reached a new level of interest by the general public because start-ups are doing well and there are new ways to be an angel (AngelList, crowdfunding, etc.). The New York Times recently published an article about the pros and cons of angel… Continue reading
Portfolio Churn — Enemy of Investment Returns
Churn destroys investment return. Strangely, traditional private equity builds itself to churn. Churn reduces investment returns for several reasons such as transaction costs, business disruption, and the difference in tax rates between ordinary income and capital gains. This last difference is the easiest to quantify as… Continue reading
Investment Returns Are Not Greener by Changing Industries
It is easier to earn outsized investment returns in some industries over others — I agree with that conventional wisdom. As an investor or entrepreneur, it often pays off to think hard about which industries to enter. If you have a choice, why not increase… Continue reading
Competitive Advantage Leads to Persistently Good Performance — Like Top Tier VC Firms
It is good to be the incumbent. Usually. They have often built competitive advantages over time. Except maybe in the ever-changing world of technology, it is usually an advantage for a business to have been around a long time and to have established customers, suppliers,… Continue reading
Joys of Ice Cream, Apple Pie, and Recurring Revenue
Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, once told a friend of mine that if Charlie were a young man, he would be “trying to find online recurring revenue businesses” — like many that are being built and growing today. The combination of recurring revenue… Continue reading
Great Tool for Business Decision Making in Uncertainty
In business decision making, we never have as much information or certainty as we would like. The best business and investment minds know how to focus on the factors in a decision that are the most relevant and ignore extraneous factors. It is a real… Continue reading
New Twist on Venture Capital with Better Risk-Adjusted Investment Returns
A higher return investment can have a broad distribution of potential outcomes, as conveyed by this graph from Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management (the graph is from his book The Most Important Things Illuminated). This graph is a more helpful way to understand risk… Continue reading
BCG Study: Superior Investment Returns From Family Business
Deep wisdom exists in how family businesses are managed for the long-term. In fact, the financial returns for closely held businesses outperform their peer groups across business cycles according to a recent study by the Boston Consulting Group and Sophie Mignon of Ecole Polytechnique. While… Continue reading